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DISSIDIA 012 : DUODECIM FINAL FANTASY


The Goods:
  • You're constantly earning new rewards from every battle  
  • New characters and features enrich the fun fighting system  
  • Lots of different modes  
  • Creation feature lets you exercise your imagination  
  • Gorgeous graphics and soundtrack. 
The Bads:
  • The story is all fluff, no substance  
  • Camera is a problem in confined spaces  
  • The overworld feels like unnecessary padding. 
 Review of the game:

When you first start playing Dissidia 012 Duodecim: Final Fantasy (a mouthful, that title), you might be struck by how little progress has been made since the first Dissidia fighting/role-playing hybrid was released. If you give it time, however, Duodecim reveals its unique strengths, building on the original in meaningful ways without sacrificing its cinematic energy. New characters, a new single-player structure, and new features (including a robust create-your-own-adventure toolset) make this another rich package, brimming with hours upon hours of colorful battles in gorgeous environments. Like in the original, every success also results in a showering of rewards in the way of currency, equipment, moves, and more. The promise of more is Duodecim's key asset, and it's a big part of what keeps you enthralled for hours on end. The obstacles hindering the joy are familiar ones: a camera that performs poorly in claustrophobic arenas and a self-indulgent story that plays out like embarrassing Final Fantasy fan fiction. 






The story is, unfortunately, a key element of Duodecim, which tosses together well-known Final Fantasy heroes into a melting pot of one-on-one battles, leveling up, and inventory management. There are multiple story modes, with the primary one focusing on the heroes new to this edition: Lightning (FFXIII), Vaan (FFXII), Yuna (FFX), Tifa (FFVII), Laguna (FFVIII), and Kain (FFIV). The tale, such as it is, focuses on the continuing conflict between the forces of Cosmos (the good guys) and Chaos (the bad guys). The proliferation of enemies called manikins further complicates the heroes' efforts to bring an end to the conflict. The setup is simple enough, but the storytelling is often an excruciating mess of superficial conversations in which every character is reduced to a single personality trait. Everyone uses a lot of words to say nothing at all ("I took a risk to believe in a chance"), and they drone on about the nature of friendship as if they were quoting from Chicken Soup for the Shallow Soul. You can skip cutscenes, though doing so brings the long-ish loading times to the forefront. 

Some of the changes that have been made to the story mode are immediately obvious; others are revealed after many hours. The most apparent addition is that of an overworld. You still move from battle to battle on overhead grids, but now, you navigate to those grids by trotting through fields and deserts. This new structural element adds little, muddling the previous game's already Byzantine story structure without much benefit. Nonetheless, trekking to your destination gives you time to enjoy the outstanding soundtrack, which remixes beloved Final Fantasy tunes into light piano ballads, brass fanfares, and minor-key reveries. There are roaming manikins to battle out there, as well as treasure chests to open. There are also shining spheres to attack; if you slash four, you earn a chain skill. On battle grids, these skills allow you to string multiple battles together, which earn you better rewards. 


Party battles are another new feature, though it takes a while for Duodecim to introduce them. Eventually, you aren't just in charge of a single character but a group of them. In turn, you may face enemies also grouped together in parties. You can either fight parties in a round-robin format, in which you control a different character in each round. Or, you can do battle in a tournament format, in which you use the same fighter until he or she is defeated and replaced by the next one on the roster. It's a great addition that grants extra freedom and diversity by letting you use multiple characters on a single grid. Once you move to the second story mode, you must also consider such aspects as emblems, which are grid pieces that offer bonuses to you or your opponent when you initiate a battle from one. There are a lot of mechanics going on at once, but Duodecim introduces them at such a measured pace that you aren't likely to feel flooded by a deluge of information. 

The fighting system has also seen some tweaks, though the basics are the same. You face your opponent on an expansive battlefield; many of them allow you to race up columns and walls, as well as grind on rails. You run across terra firma and dart through the air, and attacks differ based on whether your feet are planted on the ground or you are hovering above it. There are two attack types: bravery and HP. Bravery attacks increase your bravery point total while subtracting from your opponent's. The higher your point total, the more damage you do when landing an HP attack. Most battles are a blast in which you and your opponent dance around each other; you fire off ranged attacks and slide around rails and then come in for a few choice slashes when you see the right opening. EX attacks have returned too, halting the action and initiating quick-time events that not only do a great amount of damage, but also show off Duodecim's extraordinary good looks. 


One major addition is that of assists. Landing bravery attacks fills your assist meter. When it's filled, you can call in a support character that stays just long enough to land (or miss) a few blows and then disappears from the battlefield. It's a good distraction that enables you to come in for some additional damage, though should your opponent strike your assisting fighter, your assist meter will be shut down for a short period of time. You can also initiate an EX revenge by activating EX mode while under attack. Time slows down, the screen's color washes away, and you get a limited period of time to bash on your competitor unabated. These and other tweaks make for great additions to the combat, adding some tactical complexity without convoluting the fighting system. And then, there are the new fighters, all of whom play in remarkably different ways from each other. Lightning is the most versatile and the most complex; she can switch among three different modes (ravager, commando, medic), which have their own unique set of attacks. Laguna is a weapons expert, tossing grenades or going in close for a shotgun blast. Each of these characters brings something new to the experience, and the story mode smartly has you switching among them, which goes a long way toward keeping the battles fresh. 
The visuals are a key element of what makes Duodecim's battles so much fun. The new arenas look fantastic. Take, for example, Orphan's Cradle, a FFXIII-themed battlefield, in which gigantic gears rotate in the distance while you and your opponent flit between columns adorned with detailed flourishes. When characters clash, the screen erupts with color--orbs of light burst from your hands and toward your opponent, and translucent shields etched with runes fire off blinding beams of energy. There's a nice sense of impact when you strike, which is a result of flamboyant animations and crisp sound effects. Midair chases have returned, and their sense of speed and cinematic close-ups make them as exciting as ever. Unfortunately, they also highlight Duodecim's occasionally frustrating camera. In exterior levels, the camera does a great job of framing the action. In confined spaces, scuffles may occur in corners, where you might get a nice view of a wall or ceiling but have no idea what's going on. Chases in such environments are a hassle because you may not be able to see your opponent; thus, you can't time your attacks and dodges. 


Groanworthy dialogue aside, the story mode is as addictive in Duodecim as in the original. Duodecim delights in showering you with gifts after every battle--and sometimes, even during. Like in every Final Fantasy game, your basic currency is gil. You use it to purchase new items: weapons, armor, and all-important accessories, which can dramatically affect your chances of winning a difficult boss battle. Another currency, called KP, is earned by meeting certain conditions in battle and completing battle chains. You spend these points by visiting the Moogles floating around in the overworld on specialty items, such as chains. You also earn PP to spend on unlockables, like new characters and stages to use in the game's other modes, alternate costumes, and even upgrades that allow you to earn rewards even faster. And through it all, your characters gain levels and unlock new abilities--some active (a ranged crossbow attack); some passive (automatically recovering from a fall). You might even create new accessories by colliding with your opponent during battle. It's new stuff all the time, and it keeps you constantly engaged.
You even unlock an entire mode--Labyrinth--in which you choose your equipment, opponents, and assist characters from a deck of cards. Then, you fight your way through battle after battle to see just how far you can get into the maze. This is Duodecim at its best, stripping away the dramatic posturing and awkward dialogue while adding a pleasant degree of unpredictability to your progression. Other modes include standard one-off battles using either preset characters or those you have worked so hard to level; multiple such battles strung together; and, of course, local multiplayer. One-off battles are as fun as ever, thanks to the variety among characters. A slow, magic-focused fighter like Ultimecia takes a short while to get a handle on if you've been enjoying the acrobatic Zidane, but she's mightily effective in the hands of the right player. The variety is balanced by consistency; the flow of battle and the various strengths and weaknesses may differ between fighters, but the controls remain fundamentally unchanged and always responsive.


Multiplayer Duodecim also adds a group battle option in which up to 10 players can meet up in a lobby and duke it out for supremacy in a tournament-style setting, one fight at a time while the others watch. Everything runs smoothly here, as it does in standard local battles, and it's a great feature should you want to host or attend a group session. It's a shame few players will ever enjoy this option, given that Duodecim doesn't offer any online play. However, if you need to practice in between bouts with your buddies, you can practice against their ghosts, which are AI characters that mimic the behaviors of previous opponents.
Fancy yourself the creative type? Then, you will enjoy another of Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy's additions: Creation mode. Here you can create your own tournament battles and dress them up with cutscenes, dialogue, music, and more. Using the PSP's text-entry tools is time consuming, but the mode is robust and easy to figure out. You can then share your quest with your friends; though again, it's a shame there is no online connectivity. Yet, Duodecim hardly feels like an incomplete package. If anything, the amount of content is all but overwhelming. Yes, much of this content is recycled, but the longer you play, the more you discover and the more you appreciate the additions. Some of the fundamentals still need some work, but Duodecim casts a powerful net--one that keeps you trapped for hours at a time, crushing your opponents so you might earn another bangle, another dagger, and another vibrant battlefield.

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FINAL FANTASY VII CRISIS CORE

The Goods:
  • Incredible and poignant story, starring a likable and complex hero  
  • Every aspect of the production design, from cutscenes to voice acting, is utterly amazing  
  • The DMW is a weird but fun way of leveling up  
  • Enjoyable and addictive combat . 
The Bads:  
  • Combat is on the easy side  
  • Player has no control over limit breaks and leveling . 
Review of the game:

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII achieves a striking balance of old and new, and juggles fan service with pure role-playing satisfaction. It's striking how these elements have been shaped into such an appealing and emotionally affecting prequel. There are some new characters and plenty of fan favorites too, such as Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith. However, the characters you're most likely to empathize with are unlikely ones, including protagonist Zack, and Sephiroth, who is complex, troubled, and even sometimes likable. The way their personal stories weave in and out of each other--and set the stage for the events in Final Fantasy VII--makes Crisis Core not just the finest role-playing experience available on the PSP, but also one of the best Japanese RPGs in years. 
 
Zack isn't new to the franchise, but he was a mere flashback in Final Fantasy VII, which may not make him seem like the best choice of leading man for a prequel to one of the best RPGs ever created. Yet he's as interesting as any Square Enix star, and transcends the usual spiky-haired heroism and teenage angst with an uncommon maturity that develops as the game continues. Revealing almost any plot point could be a spoiler; the Gaia world is rich with mythology and complex character motivation. What's important is how the characters interact, change, and grow. Scenes between Zack and Cloud are both effortless and poignant, and stem directly out of Zack's most impressive character traits: trust and loyalty. As each plot thread twists together and the game reaches its inevitable conclusion, your heart will soften and you may shed a few tears. Crisis Core tells a memorable and exciting tale, but more importantly, it makes you care about its characters, even if you are new to the lore. The game's final scenes are amazing and heartfelt, and one sequence in particular that brilliantly mingles gameplay with narrative is one of the most incredible and moving moments in role-playing history. 

The game's stunning cutscenes have an immeasurable effect on the emotionally resonant story. There is a harmonious mix of prerendered cinematics and in-engine cutscenes, and both were created with precision. Dramatic camera angles frame Crisis Core's greatest moments, from earth-shaking soliloquies to the quiet pauses Zack and Aerith share. There is a standout scene in which Sephiroth comes into deep focus using a cinematography technique familiar to Alfred Hitchcock fans. This kind of range is rare in cutscenes, even in RPGs, yet it's never forced or overdone here. The quality is further enhanced by incredible voice acting. Past Final Fantasies have sometimes suffered from awkward English voice-overs, but each actor here delivers the right degree of emotion at the right time, which in turn gives weight to the story. As Zack matures, you can hear the newfound confidence replace his adolescent arrogance; when Angeal tells Zack that he's just a little more important than his sword, you can hear a subtle grin in his deep, commanding baritone. 

If you enjoyed Final Fantasy VII, this kind of attention to detail won't come as a surprise. However, you may be startled at how the combat works. Crisis Core is an action RPG. Granted, it does have many of the same elements as FFVII: materia, limit breaks, and so on. However, it plays nothing like its inspiration, which may irritate some fans. This doesn't make it better or worse, but it does make it different, and once you get used to it, it's a lot of fun. Battles are almost exclusively random, with the exception of those that end your side missions (more on those later). When combat begins, you are limited to a contained area, but you can move freely within it. To target an enemy, you simply face in its direction, and to attack, you hit X. It's not quite real-time, but rather a series of quick turns that give you a smidgen of time in-between to select a different spell or attack. You can switch among different options and spells on the fly using the shoulder buttons. If you're familiar with the Tales series (Tales of the Abyss, and so on), you'll have a rough idea of how the combat works in Crisis Core. 


You can also guard and evade oncoming attacks, though doing so spends action points. A number of special attacks, such as assault twister, also use action points. Other attacks, like spells, use up magic points. To perform them, you need to possess and equip the corresponding materia. Zack can't use an unlimited number of materia in battle; he's limited to a certain number at a time, so you'll want to choose wisely before you head into late-game combat, especially if you know a boss fight is imminent. You can also fuse materia together to make new spells or enhanced attacks, such as the impressive Thundara Blade. There are times when you'll need to take advantage of your materia and dodge oncoming attacks. Nevertheless, for the first half of the game, Crisis Core is remarkably easy, and a lot of battles come down to mashing on the X button. There is no shortage of potions and gil (the series' currency), either, and given that you can purchase items at any save point, there's no reason not to be fully stocked

The combat is fun, and it will get Final Fantasy fans talking. But no mechanical element is bound to get more attention than the Digital Mind Wave, or DMW. The DMW is a slot reel that holds the key to two important facets of Crisis Core's gameplay: leveling up, and powerful attacks called limit breaks. The reel contains six slots: three that contain character portraits, and three that contain numerical digits. As you fight foes, you earn soldier points, which in turn function as currency that keeps the DMW in the top left corner spinning. When the left and right character portraits match, you enter a separate limit-verge screen where you wait for the digit slots and the center character slot to stop spinning. If you match all three portrait slots, you unleash a limit break, which is accompanied by a dramatic cinematic. If you match numerals, you may level up an equipped materia or Zack himself. The DMW also controls some status changes, such as temporary invincibility, though they aren't signaled by a change to the limit-verge screen. 
This all sounds very confusing, and it may take you some time to figure out exactly what's going on. Essentially, leveling and limit breaks are left to the roll of the dice (or in this case, the spinning of the reel). The idea of random leveling and special attacks may make you squirm, and on paper, it sounds like a bad idea. In practice, it works out far better than you'd think. Just like when you pull the lever of a real slot machine, it's exciting and intriguing to see if you make a match. You can't skip past the limit verge screen, but if you could, you'd be missing the point (and be warned that you can't skip past cutscenes, though you can skip out of the long summoning animations and the flashbacks that occasionally crop up during limit verges). Your results are not completely random because your character's heightened emotions make it likelier that the DMW will spin up a positive result, such as after a phone call with Aerith. However, you may go a while without leveling up, only to level up multiple times in a short period of time. Sure, it's a strange system, and it will make your head spin at first. But it will become second nature, and in the end, it works. The downside is that it takes control of the game's most impressive attacks out of the hands of the player. Not everyone enjoys having the game do the grunt work for them, but the system is original and streamlined, and likely to grow on you. 

Outside of the main story, there are plenty of side missions to keep you occupied. Most of them boil down to entering an area, killing a bunch of creatures, and earning your reward. It's simple, sure, but incredibly addicting, perfect for players on the go, and you may find yourself losing hour after hour to mission after mission. This is Crisis Core's grinding mechanic, but the combat is entertaining enough (and the DMW mesmerizing enough) to keep you involved. Some of the missions also weave in cameos from other characters, such as a charming set of missions centered on an impish Yuffie. Yet the action and limited customization goes only so far, and it seems that Square Enix understood that. Crisis Core is on the short side, clocking in at around 20 hours if you do a reasonable number of side missions, though you could add another 10 if you want to see every secret the game is hiding--and there are some good ones that will get fans talking. That may make the game feel less grand than previous entries, but in actuality, the length feels just right and keeps the action from wearing out its welcome. 


You'll marvel at Crisis Core's visual and sonic beauty. Environments were designed with painstaking detail, from the slums of Midgar to the crystalline vistas of an underground lake. Character design is equally terrific, from Genesis' solemn sneer to Zack's gleaming blue eyes. Monsters look great too, and the imposing and astonishing bosses are particularly awesome to behold. The game sounds as good as it looks, starting with the terrific musical score, which includes both grinding rock tracks and haunting orchestral interludes. There are moments in which the action is undercut not with the same heart-pumping guitars we've heard before, but with softer tunes. These battles feel even more important because the music connects them so well with the emotional scenes that came before. Additionally, familiar sound effects have been updated and new ones added to make for combat that sounds as tremendous as it looks. 

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is a game you must play if you own a PSP, if you like RPGs, or if you want to get lost in a gripping story. Like most Final Fantasy games that came before it, it has its quirks. However, this is one of those cases where you should embrace them for their originality and charm because they add something uniquely compelling to the game. The only truly disappointing aspect of Crisis Core is reaching the end, because Gaia is a world you want to stay in, populated with extraordinary characters who will move you.

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TACTICS OGRE : LET US CLING TOGETHER


The Goods:
  • Extremely large number of party-customization options  
  • Learning curve is surprisingly gentle  
  • Excellent story allows players to go in a variety of different directions  
  • CHARIOT system is an excellent addition.
The Bads:
  • Friendly AI can be irritatingly suicidal  
  • Scant multiplayer options.
 Review of the game:

The PSP has been a haven for ports and remakes of varying quality over the years, but the remastered Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together sets a new standard for remakes on any system. It may not look like much has changed at first glance, but dig a little deeper, and it quickly becomes clear just how much thought the team at Square Enix has put into this remake of the 1995 tactical RPG for the Super Famicom. 


This is actually the second time that Tactics Ogre has been ported to another system, the first being a disappointing PlayStation remake that was localized by Atlus. That version was plagued by slowdown and long loading times, which are both mercifully absent in this PSP update. Given that even Square Enix's Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions struggled with its share of technical problems, it's refreshing to play a port as tightly coded as this one. It also does much to expand upon the original source material. In the original game for the Super Nintendo, which was never released in North America, enemies scaled with the most powerful characters in the party, making it incredibly difficult to level up the weaker characters. The remake fixes that by having whole classes level up instead; so if a character is struggling to keep up, you can always make them a Knight instead and they'll suddenly jump to Level 14. 

The flipside, of course, is that new classes typically begin at Level 1, and the only way to gain experience is to put the character in a corner during a battle while everyone else does the dirty work. The process can be difficult and time-consuming, and not everyone will have the patience to level up the Dragoon or Ninja when they finally become available. Nevertheless, it's a unique approach, and one that alleviates that much of the frustration of the original. The skill system has likewise gotten a substantial overhaul. Now Battle Points are distributed following a battle, which can be spent to acquire skills that augment both offensive and defensive capabilities. There are a multitude of skills to choose from, but the key is that it's extremely difficult to be good at everything. Magic users, for instance, generally have to specialize in one or two types of magic, as each element takes up a precious skill slot. Sure, it's possible to go into battle with a mage capable of wielding every type of magic, but doing so means you won't be able to equip skills that augment your magical powers or stregthen your defense. 

This balancing act helps to ensure that no character ever gets to the point that they are invincible, which is all too common in other tactical RPGs. Moreover, Tactics Ogre allows up to 12 characters on the field, meaning that there's a much greater focus on party synergy than in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, which allows only five characters. You will quickly learn the benefit of having two Mages on the field, each with a different set of skills designed to handle all contingencies. 


On the battlefield, the action plays out much like any isometric tactical RPG, which makes sense given that Tactics Ogre helped to define that subgenre in the first place. There are no "Player" or "Enemy" phases; instead, each character moves according to their speed ranking. It remains an interesting approach to tactical RPG design, as it means that time magic (such as haste) factors in much more heavily than usual. Elevation also has a major part to play, as archers and mages with the high ground can pick apart approaching forces with ease. Line of sight comes into play when trying to attack enemies from far away, so it's important to stake out the high ground when you get the chance. Fire a spell with an ally in the way, and they will get pinged in the back for some serious damage. The fixed camera would ordinarily make things especially irritating in that regard, but Tactics Ogre provides an interesting compromise. By holding the square button, it's possible to shift the camera to an overhead view, which makes it much easier to get lined up and hit enemies rather than allies. It is one of the new features that make this update such a stand-out. 

Should you make a mistake anyway and accidentally hit a party member with a badly-aimed fire spell though, there's also the new CHARIOT system. This feature makes it possible to rewind as far back as 50 moves, effectively resetting the chess pieces and allowing you to take a new approach to a battle. It's most useful when combat is going badly, as it basically automates the save/load process inherent to this genre. In a game like Tactics Ogre where characters can die permanently, the CHARIOT system is particularly useful given the suicidal tendencies of the guest characters, who will more often than not be cut down because they decided it was a good idea to rush into the middle of a pack of enemies. As certain guest characters need to survive in order to be recruited, the CHARIOT system saves a lot of frustration. The system isn't mandatory, however. It's perfectly possible to play through Tactics Ogre without even using the CHARIOT system once, which will likely be a point of pride among dedicated fans.  


Perhaps the crowning achievement is the story. The original game was well ahead of its time in the way it offered players radically different paths to victory; and once again, the remake expands upon those ideas. When the "World" system is unlocked following the game's conclusion, it becomes possible to revisit past decisions and take a different route. Given the complexity of the story--it's a workout just to keep up with all of the factions--the ability to explore the different paths without having to start a whole new game is a welcome addition. It effectively doubles the playtime that Tactics Ogre offers, as different branches offer different missions and different allies, which makes for a vastly different experience. 

And this is a story worth exploring. Denam, Catiua and Vyce are all well-defined characters with their own motivations, and there are a multitude of side characters who can become allies or enemies depending on your actions. There are no definitive "good" and "evil" choices; instead, they are mostly there to make you decide whether the ends justify the means. It's remarkable how mature the story is given that Tactics Ogre is actually a fifteen year old RPG. The complex tale of war, rebellion, jealousy and betrayal matches almost anything on the market today. 

Regrettably, the "multiplayer" mode is really just a tease. Downloading an AI-controlled version of another player's party is all well and good, but it hardly approaches the suite of options available in War of Lions. Given that it's been done before, it would seem natural to have full-on competitive and cooperative modes for those looking to squeeze every last ounce of enjoyment from this game. It's not a crucial omission, but it is a disappointing one. Really though, the world would be a happier place if all remakes were as well thought out as Tactics Ogre. It dramatically improves on the original by fixing many of the original's flaws and building what was already great, all while adding numerous subtle flourishes to the presentation. Obviously, a complete graphical overhaul would have been more than welcome, but the enhanced spell effects and the fully-voiced story sequences do more than enough to make it feel at home on the PSP. 


With its well-balanced party customization and superior story combined with new and interesting features like the CHARIOT system, Tactics Ogre is the best tactical RPG available on the PSP today. Don't let the lack of a flashy, modern presentation turn you off; anyone who loves wading into deep, lovingly-crafted RPGs are truly in for a treat.

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METAL GEAR SOLID : PEACE WALKER


The Goods:
  • High production values  
  • Great soundtrack  
  • Plenty of diverse activities that invite extended play  
  • Intense boss fights.
The Bads:
  • Occasionally fiddly controls  
  • No checkpoints in the long story missions.
 Review of the game:

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a portable addition to the celebrated stealth series, is a rich, fully fledged Metal Gear Solid game with top-notch production values and masses of content, packed onto the PSP. It complements a great-looking stealth-action campaign with a strong co-op offering and bite-sized challenge missions, framed with a neatly presented resource management system in which you establish a private army. The game's many sideshows, ranging from tech development paths to member recruitment and a versus mode, add further value and depth to a commendably well-rounded experience.


Peace Walker is set shortly after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, returning to the 1970s to tuck a characteristically twisty plot into the series' timeline. You play as Big Boss--Snake, to his friends--against the backdrop of the Cold War, with the CIA and KGB covertly meddling in Costa Rica. Snake and his mercenary startup, the Militaires Sans Frontieres, are enlisted to bring peace to the troubled country, which has no military of its own. Naturally, this demands that you sneak and shoot your way through various Central American environments, battling tanks and giant mechs at regular intervals. The plot, which veers between quirky comedy, conspiracy thriller, and military melodrama, is never less than compelling--even poignant towards the end, as Snake ponders the fate of his former mentor, The Boss. It plays out in stylish, animated graphic-novel snippets. Though these artsy cutscenes aren't overly long, you can conveniently pause them or, with the exception of some interactive segments, skip them entirely.

The stealth action at the heart of Peace Walker is tense, challenging, and tightly executed. It requires patience and strategy, not gung-ho combat. Outside of forced combat sections and boss battles, you're encouraged to go methodically and stealthily, putting the growing collection of gadgets at your disposal to good use. These range from the sonar vision of the Sonic Eye, to the distracting power of a well-placed nudie magazine. The cover system lets you put your back to a wall with a press of the action button, but it's meant for peeping around corners and planning your next move, not for popping out and shooting enemies. Still, the shooting is satisfying, and a generous auto-aim toggled by the Select button is a particular mercy.

Using the default control scheme, you control the camera and manual aiming with the face buttons, move with the analog nub, and access the menu and perform context-sensitive actions with the directional buttons. These controls mostly succeed at being fluid and intuitive, though they can be slightly fiddly on occasion, as can the two other control set-ups on offer. When trying to scroll through your gadgets or weapons, for instance, by holding a face button and a directional button simultaneously, Snake is frozen in place while you rifle through your inventory, since the game doesn't pause. This vulnerability can be frustrating in the heat of a boss fight if you need to switch gadgets while out of cover.

At the end of missions, you gain experience points and--depending on your play style--either earn or lose heroism points. These reward you for favouring sneaking over killing and invite smarter, more strategic play rather than skin-of-your-teeth running and gunning. Peace Walker doesn't overly punish you for falling short of stealth perfection, but it never stops encouraging you to do your best.

The environments are handsome, though not hugely diverse. There are long spells in which you're mostly looking at green and brown jungle, but at least it is scattered with deft little visual twinkles: a hazy rainbow in a waterfall or a flitting butterfly. These are understated reminders of Peace Walker's significant graphical achievement. The real spectacle comes less often, though with added impact, during the key boss fights. These are dramatic and challenging--pattern-based, but never tedious. In one standout battle, staged among misty Mayan temple ruins, a huge hovering AI weapon drifts in and out of the fog, crooning electronically like it's singing in the shower. The sound design is intricate and superb, and the musical score is typically rousing. The game's melodramatic ballad theme, "Heavens Divide," takes a good gaming moment and makes it unforgettable, kicking in partway through a battle with an attack helicopter.


Snake also acquires an offshore facility, Mother Base, to house his burgeoning private army. As if liberating Costa Rica weren't work enough, the day-to-day running of Mother Base also falls to you. As you work your way through levels, rescued prisoners and downed enemies can be recruited and swiftly airlifted off the battlefield with a Fulton recovery balloon to be transported back to the base. Then, between levels, Mother Base is your home screen: an expanding array of menus through which you assign roles (combat, research, medical, mess hall, or intel) to your new recruits, plus dispatch combat squads to far-flung conflicts, send care packages to other players, and eventually start piecing together your own metal gear.

Though all this resource management takes place in lists, stats, symbols, and tech development paths, it is well presented and makes for an enjoyable break between the intense campaign missions. The elements are interconnected and, more importantly, feed into the core stealth action, away from the world of balancing stats and managing teams. Your research team's level, which increases with new and better recruits, feeds into the weapon technology available for development. The combat team earns the points you need to build the new guns and gadgets you covet. Meanwhile, the medical team operates the sick bay where your wounded are sent to recover over time, and the mess hall team keeps morale up so that staff don't turn hostile and need to spend time in the brig cooling off. It makes for a fun diversion rather than spreadsheet-like busywork, although if you're truly uninterested, you can instead delegate and have the game automatically assign roles to new recruits.


Besides receiving recruits plucked off the battlefield with the Fulton balloon, your base gains new members via volunteers who arrive between missions, attracted by your rising heroism score. You can also trade staff with other players and undertake an "entrance exam" time trial mission in which you must knock out prospective recruits in hand-to-hand combat.

The multiplayer features local competitive and cooperative play and lets you trade gear and soldiers with other players. Versus play options, which support up to six players, include the requisite team deathmatch and base defence modes, which are fun if not remarkable additions. This is a game primarily built on stealthily outsmarting AI characters, and it doesn't shine to its fullest extent in player-on-player combat. There are fully customisable rule sets and loadouts, though, and a good number of environments to do battle in.

Cooperative play, on the other hand, is a great addition for friends working through Peace Walker together. The number that can play together varies; only two players are permitted in main missions, while four players can team up for boss battles, although bringing in two more players in the middle of a session might be a tricky proposition. But there are plenty of novel kicks with two-player stealth, not least among them an automatically synchronised sneaking mode and two-man cardboard box "tanks" to hide beneath and shuffle around in. Cooperative play changes the whole experience, because having two players opens up new stealth strategies, and some levels are designed with areas accessible by one player giving the other a leg up. Peace Walker also has no difficulty settings and doesn't make enemies any more challenging when additional players join in, so the extra firepower provided by teaming up is helpful in boss battles.

In addition to the main missions, there are Extra Ops: short, repeatable side missions playable as Snake or any of your combat staff and good for picking up extra points to put into your gadget and weapon tech. If you can't arrange a team of players to take down the tougher bosses, you may need to replay some of these in order to level your heavy weapons--but, thankfully, this progression is quick and the missions are short. Since each is just a few minutes long, Extra Ops is the part of the game best suited for short bursts of play on the move, along with the entrance-exam recruitment minigame. The longer, campaign levels, many of which connect four or five discrete areas with no checkpointing, aren't so well suited to a bite-sized, portable experience and are best reserved for longer, stationary sessions. But with the wide variety of modes and activities, you'll always find something to suit the time you have available to play.


Peace Walker offers value in spades. Even for an adept player, completing the main storyline is no weekend job, taking easily upwards of 20 hours, and the whole experience, trimmings and all, demands replay. The way the game's multiple modes fit together and feed into each other will entice even a reluctant completionist to keep chipping away. Once you've completed the story, the moreish gameplay and steady rewards of new unlocked goodies mean you want to fully staff your base and level up your combat teams, not to mention go after the next weapon or gadget upgrade, as well as codenames and insignia awarded for completing achievement-like challenges and trying out different play styles.

With stellar presentation, great looks and sound, and deep, diverse gameplay, Peace Walker is an essential experience that raises the bar for portable games. It combines the ambition and gloss of a full-sized console title with plenty of novelties and conveniences to make it a superb portable experience.

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GOD OF WAR : GHOST OF SPARTA


The Goods:
  • Incredible visuals, both technically and artistically  
  • Violent combat with responsive controls  
  • Puzzles are a great change of pace  
  • Thoughtful story with a couple of touching moments.
The Bads:
  • Does little to differentiate itself from other God of War games  
  • Design issues affect both the visuals and combat.
 Review of the game:

The word "epic" gets thrown around an awful lot, but it's rare that a portable game is worthy of such a lofty distinction. God of War: Ghost of Sparta doesn't let the diminutive hardware it resides on get in the way of delivering the breathtaking sense of scale for which the series is known. Incredible visuals ensure the mythical locations you venture to continually amaze with their strong sense of place and varied artistic design. And sharp controls push Kratos' unrelenting rage to the forefront so you can focus on tearing the minions who dare oppose you limb from bloody limb. Ghost of Sparta is an impressive technical achievement that is almost indistinguishable from its PlayStation 2 brothers, but that authenticity comes with a few drawbacks. The chaotic action makes it easy to lose Kratos on the PSP's small screen, and some of the controls are uncomfortable enough to cause aggravation. But aside from a few awkward moments, Ghost of Sparta is another great entry in the respected series that does justice to Kratos' deadly exploits. 


Kratos' bond to his family has been the underlying theme that connects every game in the God of War series together. In Ghost of Sparta, Kratos' ultimate goal is to discover the fate of his brother who was forcibly separated from him when they were both still children. The adventure takes place between the first two games in the series, and it does a fine job of fleshing out his painful backstory while furthering the notion that Kratos must exact revenge on the gods. There are a few clever sequences in which the story and gameplay are intertwined, and these prove to be the most powerful moments in the game. Kratos is more complex than his angry facade would lead you to believe, and being able to see how he relates to his blood relatives goes a long way toward making this god slayer feel like a normal man with a few larger-than-life problems. 

The slowly developing story does a good job of pushing you through this thrilling adventure, but it's the outstanding visuals that provide the wow factor. This is a stunning-looking game. Clever camera work smoothly transitions between tight close-ups and sweeping panoramas, and exacting details ensure that every view comes with its own visual delights. The technical range is particularly impressive because the game floods the screen with enemies and special effects without skipping a beat, and the artistic flourishes give every creature a unique personality and each location a different feel. Unfortunately, because the screen is so small, it can be difficult to locate the pint-sized Kratos during certain sequences where you must battle a horde of enemies while the camera is pulled way back. It's a small price to pay for such an amazing-looking game, but it does lessen the impact when you can't see what you're doing. 

The brutal combat continues the trend of shrinking the console experience down to the portable world. Belting out combos that stretch well into the dozens is a snap, thanks to razor-sharp controls that make it a savage joy to rip your enemies to shreds. The assortment of magical attacks and weapons that you unlock during the course of your journey may not veer far from previous games in the series, but they do provide enough variety to ensure you're engaged the entire time. Rolling out of the way of an impending attack is fast and responsive, but parrying deadly blows is slightly tougher. The combination of a zoomed-out camera and a small screen makes it tricky to time your block against certain enemies, and though the game is easy enough on the default difficulty to avoid frustration, it's still annoying. More aggravating is the reliance on rapidly tapping the shoulder buttons to escape certain attacks. This is clunky at best and downright painful at worst, and it could have been avoided if tapping the face buttons were the option instead. Despite a few stumbles, the controls are generally smooth and responsive, making it a visceral delight to battle the minions in your path. 

In between your binges of unrepentant bloodshed are cerebral puzzles that let you rest your muscles for a second and get your cognitive skills firing. These thoughtful breaks are expertly interwoven with the brutal combat, giving you a chance to catch your breath for a few minutes before you're back to slicing off heads once more. The puzzles often rely on tasks from the previous games, so you once again have to make clever use of dead bodies as in God of War: Chains of Olympus and punt dogs into specific objects as Kratos did in God of War III, but that doesn't hinder the fun of figuring out what needs to be done to proceed. The puzzles find a good middle ground between painfully obvious and maddeningly obtuse, so you still feel empowered when you solve a tricky conundrum and don't have to worry about being stranded in the same spot because it's way too challenging. The one flaw pertains, once again, to the zoomed-out camera and small screen. You often have to interact with a specific object to move on, and it can be tough to see what needs to be done when it's just a few pixels high. But, for the most part, the puzzles are a great respite from the hectic action.


Boss fights are the one area where Ghost of Sparta falters. You square off against a number of murderous monsters, and finishing them off in style is certainly exciting. But the fights are ultimately forgettable for a number of reasons. First, they are exceptionally easy. A seasoned God of War player should be able to breeze through every one of these encounters without any problems, and it's not exactly thrilling to topple a giant pushover. Second, they borrow so heavily from previous games in the series that they don't have an identity of their own. This is true for the vast majority of the game, whether it's the boss fights, puzzles, visual design, or combat, and it's not until the end that Sparta becomes its own beast. The entire last level, and especially the boss, is when Sparta finally separates itself from the games that came before it. 

The biggest problem with Ghost of Sparta is that it tries so hard to mirror previous entries in the series that it doesn't have its own identity. This hinders the gameplay occasionally because a feeling of deja vu permeates all of your actions, and the PSP just can't match its console peers. But when Sparta's biggest problem is that it's too close to the excellent games that came before it, that's not a huge setback. This is not only an amazing-looking game, but it's incredibly fun as well. Slicing mischievous minions in a variety of stunning locales is an exhilarating experience, and because the adventure stretches on for more than 10 hours, you can lose yourself in this fantastical land for quite a while. Ghost of Sparta is a gorgeous and satisfying adventure that will keep you glued to the screen until the very end. 

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SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI : PERSONA 3 PORTABLE


The Goods:
  • Fascinating story with new social links  
  • Player-friendly tweaks increase ease of play  
  • Addictive customization features  
  • Great presentation with handy fast travel  
  • High replayability.
The Bads:
  • Repetitive dungeon exploration  
  • Standard battles a little routine.
 Review of the game:

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable is the third iteration of the highly popular PlayStation 2 role-playing game, Persona 3. It's just as enjoyable but now includes a female protagonist for a fresh perspective, along with new story aspects. It's also been successfully streamlined for greater convenience, finally allowing you to assume direct control of party members. Barring a degree of repetitiveness, P3P is a robust adventure that is especially well suited for series newcomers. 


The macabre, rich story begins by unveiling the Dark Hour, which is when a towering dungeon called Tartarus appears and releases vile shadow monsters. You're cast as a high school student fighting alongside friends to destroy the shadow menace, relying on the power of persona--ancient beings that represent the many facets of the soul. In addition to offering the original male character, P3P introduces a new female lead that implements eight new friendship bonds called social links. Social links are interesting side stories, often surprising you with exciting twists that add to the main plot's intensity. The new social links alter your dating options and let you learn more intriguing details about the males in the main cast, which should appeal to P3 veterans. Deepening your friendship bonds--perhaps even falling in love--increases your ability to summon stronger persona, giving you a decisive edge. 

Dungeon exploration suffers from an outdated maze mechanic and excessive backtracking. Tartarus is segmented into blocks, each containing numerous floors that operate as random mazes littered with shadows. You're given little to break up the monotonous exploration aside from the occasional boss and a change in textures. New rescue missions attempt to spice up the labyrinth, but they're overly simplistic, involving little more than searching a set range of floors to locate a missing person. Quests are somewhat challenging but repetitive, often requiring that you backtrack through previous floors to find items or defeat specific foes. Fortunately, you can now use the main entrance to continue exploring from the floor you left off of, so you won't have to teleport to a previously completed block and work your way back up to where you were--a long-awaited adjustment. 

The sheer volume of persona and unique abilities keep the combat interesting. While your teammates are limited to summoning a single persona, you're able to carry up to 12 simultaneously. Each persona and enemy specializes in an attack type, such as fire or slash, while also harboring weaknesses. The goal is to exploit an enemy's weakness, knocking it off balance so your team can perform a devastating group attack, which encourages strategic planning. A helpful "analyze" ability lets you determine a foe's weakness without entering the menu system, which speeds up battles. The new cooperative techniques enable you and an ally to perform a powerful critical attack that knocks a sole standing enemy off-balance, making it much easier to trigger group attacks. 


A variety of tactical options help you manage your team in tough situations. You can issue specific instructions for teammates, or, for the first time in P3, you can seize direct control of your allies. This handy adjustment is the game's most welcome change, as advantageous bosses use status ailments such as charm to turn your own attacks against you, increasing your need to assume direct command. Though enemies are clever, many standard battles devolve into routine elemental casting to capitalize on an enemy's weakness; fortunately, a lightning-fast autobattle option serves to lessen any repetitiveness. 

The game's greatest highlight has to do with its robust customization, which allows you to develop the ultimate persona team. You're able to modify persona by leveling them to acquire new abilities or by fusing them together to unlock new persona, passing along inherited skills they wouldn't otherwise learn. There are roughly 170 persona, including four new creatures for a minor roster boost that have numerous abilities with which to experiment. New skill cards let you teach a persona a specific ability without fusing, which makes the process easier without undermining its addictive qualities. Additionally, you can fuse your strongest persona into unique weaponry to craft elite gear, which is quite satisfying. 

A variety of modifications increase ease of play. A greater spectrum of difficulty modes ups both the comfort level and challenge, so you can play casually or face off against ruthless shadows in Maniac mode. You're now able to manage the team's equipment from within the same menu, which is a huge improvement upon Persona 3's system, which forced you to speak with teammates individually to initiate gear swaps. Various shops perform more functionally by increasing your social status, such as your charm level, which can help unlock social links. A few even allow you to work part time, so it's much easier to score cash. Finally, a data install option noticeably shortens loading times and quickens combat animations. 


The game boasts a stylish and smart exterior. Clean static backdrops replace the crude 3D environments of its predecessors, allowing for intuitive fast travel that lets you quickly maneuver without scrolling through the map. Detailed character portraits express a variety of emotions during naturally voiced dialogue. Character models move fluidly and register pretty closely with their console counterparts but are slightly rough around the edges. The soundtrack includes 10 new songs, and while most are hit or miss, they're upbeat and suit the game's ambiance. Regrettably, the animated cutscenes have been dropped because of storage issues, but their absence doesn't mar the experience. 

You can spend upward of 90 hours fleshing out social links and fusing persona, as both are highly addictive and expansive; a second play-through is practically required to unlock all content. A new paradigm door allows you to defeat previous bosses that now fight with greater ferocity, all for satisfying rewards. A bonus dungeon houses the strongest foes, drastically shortening leveling time so you can quickly strengthen persona, but it operates so similarly to Tartarus that it feels like an afterthought. 

Persona 3 holds up remarkably well in this rendition, tweaking everything from basic combat mechanics to menus in order to create a more player-friendly experience. It provides a wealth of personas and great replayability, and the somewhat repetitive dungeon-crawling is easily overshadowed by the vast array of persona abilities. New dialogue and entertaining dating opportunities also entice, as unraveling the extensive new social links freshens the story. Despite minor shortcomings, Persona 3 Portable remains an enthralling and rewarding journey.


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GOD EATER BURST


The Goods:
  • Battles versus giant creatures are fun and intense  
  • Different types of weaponry and bullets give battles variety  
  • The story gets interesting after a slow start  
  • Great atmospheric visuals and sound.
The Bads:
  • Camera and control quirks  
  • Mission repetition and limited focus can lead to tedium.
 Review of the game:

If you've played a Monster Hunter game, you would naturally compare it to Gods Eater Burst. In both cases, you join your chums and do battle with gargantuan creatures that take away large chunks of your health with a single swipe of their massive tails, or with a single bite from their gnashing teeth. In between battles, you use monster bits and other items you've gathered to create new weapons or upgrade those already in your possession, in turn making it possible to take on even bigger, badder fiends. But while comparisons are inevitable, dismissing Gods Eater Burst as a mere clone would be doing this enjoyable game a disservice. Eerie, attractive environments make it a pleasure to stalk your ferocious targets, and being able to quickly switch between ranged and melee weapons grants your hunts intensity. Not every facet of this action/role-playing hybrid is a winner. A cumbersome camera and control scheme can get in the way, and the condensed structure will have you longing for more gameplay variety. These and other flaws notwithstanding, it's hard to deny the appeal of joining some real-world or computer-controlled comrades and cutting a roaring brute down to size.


Gods Eater Burst takes place on Earth, but it isn't an Earth you would recognize. The planet has been ravaged by mutant beasts called aragami, and an organization called Fenrir has made it its mission to wipe them from the planet. Fenrir's goals aren't always so noble and pure, however, and as the game progresses, you learn more about their scientific studies on the creatures that roam the land. At first, you aren't likely to be invested in the story, or in the role-playing archetypes that inhabit it. Among them are the overeager, histrionic adolescent; the sighing ingenue hiding a terrible secret (as all such characters must); and the faux-mysterious, spiky-haired sulk who keeps his teammates at arm's length. Each character is enthusiastically and inexpertly voiced by a cast that knows no subtlety, going heavy on the whimpers, chirps, and breathless line deliveries. Awkward characters aside, the plot takes enough twists and turns to get you interested in this world and its enigmas. Who is the gaunt, ghostly figure glimpsed on the battlefield? What is the meaning behind a newcomer's visions? What exactly is Fenrir looking for out in the howling wastes? The answers often lead to more intriguing questions--enough to see this tale to the end.

Those characters are the Gods Eaters, though irritatingly, while the game's subtitles all use the phrase "Gods Eater," the spoken dialogue is always delivered in the singular: "God Eater." Armed with weapons created from the very DNA of the monsters you hunt, you and up to three companions head into the bleak landscape to hound your enemies and scavenge for raw resources. These environments are all attractive and in some cases rather haunting. Pockmarked skyscrapers loom above you, a reminder of the civilization that once stood there. Falling rain and cloudy, turquoise skies provide a menacing backdrop to the tense battles that transpire. The aurora borealis stretches across the heavens in one snowy map; glowing lava is a sinister touch in another. As you jog across these stretches searching for your quarry, an eerie howl fills your heart with dread. The presentation is excellent, and unlike in similar games, you move freely about each battlefield without any intrusive loading times. It's unfortunate that your dozens upon dozens of missions occur on a relatively small number of maps. Fortunately, repetition is at least partially relieved by the visual diversity among Gods Eater Burst's atmospheric environments.


The high visual quality and diversity carry over to the beasts you fight, some of which have characteristics of real-world creatures, and others of which seem almost demonic in origin. One aragami looks and acts somewhat like a giant scorpion, but when it shields its face with a creepy skeleton mask, you know it's no simple arachnid. A gorgeous, toxic angel takes to the skies, emitting poisonous dust--half beautiful butterfly, half shrieking spirit. You won't see any indications of a living ecosystem as you might in a Monster Hunter game, so fans of that series might miss that touch of authenticity. Yet Gods Eater Burst makes up for this loss with the pure inventiveness of the aragami designs and behavior. You fight the same creatures time and again, though you meet new ones as you progress, while familiar ones learn new attacks and come in variants that are more vulnerable to certain attacks than others. Early on, you might take on one at a time, but missions mix things up later, sometimes requiring you to fell a large number of simpler foes, or sometimes throwing two, three, or even more massive monsters at you at once.

Of course, you aren't helpless in the face of such insurmountable odds. Mission descriptions indicate any aragami weaknesses, so you know which type of weapon might be best to equip before heading out. You fill three different equipment slots: melee weapon, shield, and gun. Melee weapons come in various flavors. Some are heavy and slow, but do good amounts of crushing or piercing damage. Others are quicker, and might have elemental properties, using ice and fire to wound your prey. Guns have their own sets of statistics, and you can purchase (and later, craft) specific types of bullets with similar elemental properties. In battle, you can switch between your melee and ranged weapons at will, but there's a catch: you can't just fire bullets willy-nilly. Rather, your ability to shoot is limited by a meter that is filled by landing melee attacks. In this way, Gods Eater Burst not only reduces the possibility of exploiting guns, but also gives combat variety by letting you both slice and shoot in a single mission.


Battles are uniformly intense. You generally get 30 minutes to complete a mission, and while it is rare to fail because the timer runs out, a single confrontation can take up a good chunk of that allotment. Aragami charge at you, spew rockets, and belly flop, among the many different attacks they deliver. Battles have a careful but smooth rhythm and require a lot of focus, since a single attack might wipe away a good portion of your health bar. If you find battles like this frustrating in similar games, you may find Gods Eater Burst's tweaks to the formula welcoming. For example, quaffing a health tonic and setting traps are brief affairs, so while you still make yourself vulnerable when performing such actions, you don't have to wait through overly long animations, nervously hoping to stay alive. Your attention is instead directed toward avoiding attacks, landing blows, and devouring your oversized targets with your weapon, which is also known as a god arc.

Yes, indeed: devouring. By holding the strong attack button, you transform your melee weapon into a set of beastly jaws that chomp on a creature. When the monster is already defeated, this earns you creature parts that are used at your home base to create and improve weapons and shields. If you successfully land a devour when the beast is still alive, you enter burst mode. This grants you a short period of time in which you do extra damage and get other special abilities, such as being able to double jump. It also gives you a limited number of special bullets that do a type of damage consistent with the monster you attacked. For example, a monster that performs lightning-type attacks will grant you a torpedo that causes spark damage. Devouring a creature is rewarding: blood spews all over the screen, your weapon's transformation looks and sounds gross and creepy, and because the chomp takes a few precious seconds to accomplish, the risk is appropriately balanced to the reward your earn. 


It's too bad that several drawbacks inhibit the joy of squashing these tyrants. Happily, you can lock on to aragami while using a melee weapon, making it easier to keep track of them than it otherwise would be. However, when there are more than one onscreen at a time, you might inadvertently lock on to a more distant foe, complicating the fight and forcing you to fiddle with the controls. There is no such mechanism when taking aim with a gun. Experienced monster hunters will get use out of the so-called "claw technique" here, which involves keeping your thumb on the analog nub and manipulating the camera by using your index finger on the D pad. You can center your view with a shoulder button, but lining up a shot when dealing with a rowdy monster or three can be a big hassle, especially in areas that don't give you a lot of breathing room.

The camera and control aggravations are usually mild, but they become more pronounced in major battles late in the game, when multiple powerful aragami bombard you with constant attacks and make it almost impossible to isolate a single target from the pack. You can revive a fallen teammate by donating half of your health to him or her, which is a great feature that keeps you in the thick of battle. However, the most punishing scenarios have an unfortunate tendency to turn into inescapable cycles of death and revival. While you can stock up on healing items aplenty and even fire healing bullets to support your teammates, the health sacrifice taken upon each revival slowly diminishes the team's overall health reserves. You might run out the clock because you spent all of your time keeping your team alive, and little time sinking your blade into attacking monsters. There aren't too many such roadblocks, but they're exasperating when they occur.


At Fenrir headquarters you can talk to key story figures, but they might have only a quip or two to share. Otherwise, you can buy key items from the merchant, or see if you have gathered enough ingredients to upgrade your equipment or perhaps create something new. Compared to similar games, this part of Gods Eater Burst seems comparatively lacking. The streamlined menus make upgrading a simple process, but there are few side activities to keep you involved outside of missions that involve fighting the same creatures time and again. You can create new clothing, but it's just cosmetic--there is no armor to don or upgrade. Farming, fishing, and other activities like those you would see in the Monster Hunter series are curiously absent. Furthermore, pre-battle preparations aren't as great a concern as they may have been. Traps, stun grenades, and other items can be handy, but they aren't always necessary when you have a full team. Gods Eater Burst is a more diluted experience than its obvious inspiration; the depth that would keep dedicated grinders invested was jettisoned in favor of an immediately accessible experience. As a result, you are likely to notice just how much of the game relies on repetition.

Yet repetition isn't inherently bad, and while tedium can set in, Gods Eater Burst's ever-evolving monster behavior keeps you on your toes. If you prefer to replace your AI companions with a friend or three via ad hoc play, the game makes it easy to join up, though you'll want to stick with players of around the same level for the best experience. It's nice, however, that you still get that sense of camaraderie if you venture out on your own, thanks to the generally dependable AI. Of course, if you're a veteran of such games, you might want to leave companions behind whenever possible for the extra challenge. Such challenges won't be to everyone's taste, and are often magnified by a camera and controls that don't take into account the strengths and weaknesses of the platform. But enjoyable battles and a strange and sinister atmosphere make Gods Eater Burst a worthwhile reason to gather up your buddies and start an adventure.

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GRAND THEFT AUTO : LIBERTY CITY


The Goods:
  • Crams all of Liberty City onto a UMD  
  • Load times are quite manageable  
  • Good sense of humor from the radio stations  
  • Captures a lot of the cool stuff from the Grand Theft Auto series.
The Bads:
  • Unstable frame rate  
  • Dull mission design  
  • Storyline never really goes anywhere  
  • Occasionally feels more like a GTA III expansion pack than an entirely new game.
 Review of the game:

Call it Grand Theft Auto Gaiden. While there have been handheld takes on the GTA series in the past, none of them have ever properly captured the things that made the modern installments in the series so popular. Things like the sprawling environments, its fast-action freestyle mayhem, and, of course, the series' great sense of humor just haven't come across on a handheld before. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is not without its problems, either; but it gets enough of the series' signature features in there to do you right.


Liberty City Stories brings you back to Rockstar's fictional take on New York City, first seen this way in 2001's revolutionary GTA III. This time around, the year is 1998, and you play the role of a returning wise guy named Toni Cipriani, who works for Salvatore Leone. Upon your return to town, you get right back to work, because the Leone crime family is about to start getting it from all sides. As you ascend to become Salvatore's right-hand man, you'll start and finish gang wars with other mafia types, a few triads, the yakuza...pretty much all of the usual suspects are present.

If you're familiar with the various mafia presences over the course of the past three GTA games, you'll recognize a few of the names and faces here. But the story stands alone and doesn't require you to remember the various cast members. That's a good thing, because the mafia characters in the other GTA games have been largely forgettable. The game's storyline really isn't up to par with the console installments in the series, because very little actually happens. Even potential plot points, like when Toni finally becomes a made man, are squandered by a bad cutscene that doesn't actually show the ceremony. The game's mission path doesn't deviate into crazy territory, and most of the characters are fairly lifeless. There are no enigmatic weirdos like Truth, the crazy hippie from San Andreas, or Steve Scott, the porno director from Vice City, to break up the heavier-handed mafia tasks. This dulls the game's personality, preventing its characters and events from becoming as memorable as we've come to expect from GTA games and their excellent storylines.

If you stick to the missions and don't mess around too much, you can finish the game's story mode in 10 to 12 hours. But the deceptive game-progress counter will only report around 40-percent completion if you stick close to the missions and don't do much else. The game has some rampage side missions and the standard pizza delivery, vigilante, taxi service, and ambulance missions, too. You can seek out ringing pay phones to get into street races. You can report to car lots to sell cars or motorcycles by test-driving vehicles for prospective consumers. And, of course, there are 100 hidden packages to find. If you get into all this optional stuff, there's a lot more city to see, and plenty of different cars to see it in.


Over the years, the missions in Grand Theft Auto have gotten more complex, but the overall difficulty has lightened up. The missions in Liberty City Stories, however, are extremely simple for the most part. Most of your given tasks are one-dimensional, such as stealing a specific car and driving it back to a location without wrecking it, or taking out a series of gang members and blowing up their prized tank. A few missions get a little deeper, but at some point, the missions just start to all run together because they aren't very interesting. The combat-heavy missions tend to be a little tougher than the driving tasks, because the game's control scheme occasionally gets in the way. The lock-on targeting in GTA games has always been a little squirrelly, but when you add a less-than-optimal target-changing control to that mix (left and right on the D pad, by default), you end up with some frustrating moments. In missions where you're given a large number of targets to take down, you're better off doing it from a distance with a sniper rifle, if possible.

The weapons in Liberty City Stories are what you'd expect from a Grand Theft Auto game. You'll start out finding basic pistols, submachine guns, and shotguns, but over time, your enemies will start to drop higher-powered weaponry. You can only carry one weapon of each type at a time, but ammo for one weapon in a class will work for another, so running over weapons is handy for collecting bullets, even if you don't decide to switch out for a lower-powered weapon. The system works roughly the same way that it worked in GTA: Vice City. In fact, the whole game feels like it's the world of Grand Theft Auto III, with some (but not all) of the Vice City enhancements thrown in. The game has motorcycles, for example. You'll also be able to change your clothes, but this works on an entire-outfit level, not on a piece-by-piece level like in San Andreas. You'll occasionally fight alongside other Leone-friendly gangsters, but they're completely controlled by rudimentary artificial intelligence. You can't issue commands to them like you could in San Andreas. Considering how dopey the AI can be in some spots--we witnessed more than one occasion where our allies decided that the best way to get closer to their target was to run in place up against a wall--a simple "get over here" command would have been handy. 


A big, big part of the Grand Theft Auto series has always been that sense of freedom...freedom to cause wanton destruction, that is. It's not a mission, and it's not something that helps your cause, but just loading up on weapons, walking into the street, and attempting to blow up and shoot as many things as possible is among the best, most thrilling aspects of the series. As is trying to escape from the scene of said crime in one of the game's various vehicles. Liberty City Stories allows you to do this much better than any of the other handheld games have, but it still does it on a slightly reduced scale. Police response definitely isn't as fierce as it is in other GTA games. You'll still see helicopters, but the game seems to know exactly when another police car onscreen would send the frame rate screeching down to single-digit territory; so it's possible to take care of all the lawmen in your immediate vicinity and not have more immediately pull up to join the fight. Also, there are a handful of other technical issues that tend to get in the way from time to time. Occasionally, getting into or out of a car causes the game to seize up for a second or so while it loads (or unloads) the radio-station audio. If you're in the middle of a rampage and attempt to dive out of one car and into another while surrounded by angry cops, that's one halt for getting out of the car, which flows into an action sequence with a somewhat choppy frame rate, followed by a total halt when you get into another car to make your escape. It certainly makes sense, given that the technical capabilities of the PSP are definitely below that of the PlayStation 2, but Liberty City Stories comes so close to matching the PS2 experience in so many different ways that these things do tend to stick out at you. That said, it's still fun to drive around the city and cause trouble, thanks in part to the game's variety of cars, each with their own different handling characteristics.

One thing that sets Liberty City Stories apart from the recent console games is its inclusion of multiplayer support for up to six players. The game has a handful of basic modes, including takes on deathmatch, capture the flag, and king of the hill. You've got team games as well as free-for-all modes, and you'll unlock more characters and locations as you proceed through the single-player game. While you can play the game with two players, the big environments make playing with two players pretty boring. But in a larger group, the game's definitely got some multiplayer charm. Just don't expect it to steal the show.


Liberty City Stories looks great for the PSP, and it's doing some very ambitious stuff from a technical standpoint. However, some parts of it do look noticeably unsightly. While the frame rate is definitely less than stable, the game still manages to convey a good sense of speed when you're driving fast. The game's characters look about as good as you could hope for, and animate pretty well in the game's many cutscenes. There's a lot of pop-up--pretty much par for the course throughout the GTA series--though here, the horizon is just a bit closer, causing cars to magically materialize just ahead of you on the road. This can make fast driving a little tough at times. Even though it has its bouts with low frame rates, it's easy to be impressed by the way the game handles such large environments. Also, the load times throughout the game are very manageable and never get out of control, which makes the game's large areas even more impressive.

The audio end of Liberty City Stories is structured identically to how it's done in the "big" games, but again, on a slightly smaller scale. The cutscenes are given full speech, and for the most part, the characters are well-portrayed and voiced, even if you don't recognize most of the names in the credits. Whenever you're in a car, you can listen to a handful of different radio stations; as you'd expect, it's here where the game gets its jokes in. From commercials telling you that the Internet is clearly a tool of the devil that ruins lives (which is true) to ads for generic mascot-driven kart-racing games, there's a lot of funny stuff here. However, the radio stations loop more frequently than you'd probably like, presumably due to storage limitations.


The music in the past two Grand Theft Auto games has been incredibly important in setting the game's tone. The '80s music in Vice City and the rap stations in San Andreas were key to both the tone and the pace of those two games. The PSP game's soundtrack doesn't really serve as the same type of pop-culture touchstone. The rap station, hosted by DJ Clue, depicts a pretty accurate take on late-'90s East Coast mix-tape and rap radio. A bunch of the music on the other stations, however, was custom-written for the game, with a focus on sounding sort of like various forms of pop music. While 1998 might be a little too recent to get nostalgic about, there's still a bunch of really awful boy-band pop music from 1997 and 1998 that would have made for perfect "driving around and running over cops" music, so it's disappointing that some higher-profile stuff didn't get licensed. The game has a custom soundtrack feature, as well, but it doesn't directly work with any of the audio already on your PSP memory stick. Instead you have to download a custom CD ripping application that Rockstar has developed and inject the audio into your saved game. Additionally, it's been built to only work with commercial CDs, so your sizable MP3 collection is apparently useless. Considering that the PSP already has MP3 file playback, it seems strange that you have to jump through so many hoops to get custom music.

It's worth mentioning that this game makes absolutely no concessions when it comes to making it a little friendlier as a portable game. You still save at safehouses, still have to drive your way to each mission, and still have to start the entire mission over again if you fail. When you're busted or wasted on a mission, the game spawns a taxi that will take you back to the mission start point, if you desire. But that would put you at the beginning of the mission with no weapons, no armor, nothing. That's not much of a help, so you're left reloading your game every time something goes wrong and going out of your way to save as often as possible.



If you're the type of person that plays your PSP games sitting down, at home, in large chunks, this doesn't make any real difference. But if you're an on-the-go sort of person who tries to squeeze in a few minutes of GTA here and there, the time it takes to get into a mission and start making progress might be a bit too much. Some in-mission checkpoints or other options would have probably solved this problem. At least the PSP has sleep mode--you won't have to load the entire game up just to play for a few minutes. Also, it's worth mentioning that while the game seems to be spinning the disc almost constantly, there doesn't seem to be a noticeably heavy drain on the system's battery life. You'll get roughly the same amount of battery life out of GTA than you would out of most other PSP games.

It's really pretty amazing that GTA: Liberty City Stories manages to cram in so much of the GTA experience that you're used to seeing on consoles. While the game is definitely a fine technical achievement and one of the best PSP games to date, the dull storyline and basic mission design do bring the whole thing down a bit. Maybe it's not entirely reasonable to expect for this game to live up to its console counterparts in every respect, but it retails for just as much as they did, and attempts to do many of the same exact things, so it really is a whole new GTA (just in a familiar setting). Yet for all it squeezes out of the PSP, it doesn't quite squeeze everything that makes the GTA series so special. But if what you're after is a game that looks and plays like a Grand Theft Auto game for your PSP, you'll definitely be satisfied.

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GRAND THEFT AUTO : VICE CITY STORIES


The Goods:
  • Vice City is just as gaudy and cheesy as you remember it  
  • Fantastic soundtrack and radio dialogue  
  • Longer missions  
  • More multiplayer modes.
The Bads:
  • Some control issues with the combat, especially in melee  
  • No real forward progress for the series to be found here--old issues still remain  
  • Texture popping is still extremely prevalent.
 Review of the game:

Rockstar's juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series debuted on the PlayStation Portable late last year in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a side-story prequel to the events that took place in Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2. With Liberty City Stories, Rockstar successfully translated its open-ended world of crime to a handheld system, though not without a few missteps. Enter Vice City Stories, the newly released PSP GTA game that follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Still, if you want to roam around a large city, shooting up the place and driving like a crazy person, few games on the PSP let you do that as well as this one does.


Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980s and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a Scarface-inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the aftermath of a cocaine deal gone wrong, and subsequently ended up building a major criminal empire throughout the city. It was a bizarre, convoluted, and completely entertaining tale, filled with ridiculous and profane characters, as well as lots of biting satire on the most superficial of decades. Vice City Stories is, again, a prequel, taking place a couple of years prior to the original game. You play as Vic Vance, the brother of central Vice City character Lance Vance. Vic's a strange fellow. When the game begins, he's just joined the army, and he gets off the transport truck at a military base in Vice City. Upon meeting his commanding officer--a borderline psychotic named Jerry Martinez--things start going wrong. We find out that Vic has joined the military to make some money to support his family, specifically his sick brother. But within the first few minutes of the game, you'll find yourself inexplicably picking up drugs for Martinez, killing Mexican gang members, and chauffeuring prostitutes.

Of course, any veteran of this series won't be shocked one bit by missions like these. The trouble here is that the setup for getting Vic into this mess is beyond flimsy. From the get-go, Vic talks about how uncomfortable he is with illegal activities, and yet he does every single illicit thing Martinez asks him to do. If you're someone who doesn't want to do anything illegal, and your boss starts asking you to pick up hookers and hide drugs for him, are you going to just gripe about it and then do it anyway? Not to mention that Vic seems completely willing to run into an apartment complex and start wasting Mexicans without even being ordered specifically to do so. He just says, "I'll go get it" (referring to owed money stashed inside one of the apartments) and goes in guns blazing. GTA heroes are never heroes, exactly, but the trick in the past has been that there's been no attempt to play those characters up as sympathetic. They weren't boy scouts--they were gangsters, killers, and dope dealers. Vice City Stories tries to present Vic as a guy who doesn't want to get into that stuff, yet he freely and frequently does throughout the entire game. He mostly comes off as a hypocritical idiot.

For what it's worth, though, once you get through about the first hour of the game, you'll probably be inclined to stop questioning why Vic is doing what he's doing and just go with it. As time passes, the game settles into the typical progression of GTA missions and oddball characters. While Liberty City Stories was almost devoid of memorable characters, Vice City Stories digs up a few favorites from the original Vice City, and introduces a couple of new ones as well. Vic's mildly crazy brother Lance, the alcoholic gun nut Phil Cassidy, the balls-obsessed Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina, and the foul-mouthed Ricardo Diaz (voiced by Phillip Michael Thomas, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, and Luis Guzman, respectively) are all back. Lance plays a huge role in the story, but the others aren't quite as prominently featured as they were in the first game. Still, you get a good chunk of time with each of them.

Functionally, Vice City Stories plays very much as Liberty City Stories did. The same basic control adjustments made in the previous game to make up for the lack of a right analog stick on the PSP are made here. When running around and shooting people, you simply press the right trigger to lock onto an enemy. Occasionally the game will lock onto random civilians, as opposed to the guy with the submachine gun blowing a hole in your head, but usually it's pretty good about identifying exactly whom you should be killing. Camera control is mapped to the left trigger, and basically all you can do is whip it behind you if you get too turned around. This will lead to occasional scenarios where you're being shot from behind and have to take a couple of extra seconds to turn your character, and then the camera, to see where to shoot.

Mostly, though, the combat is quite fun. Running around causing mayhem and blasting away at the masses is just as enjoyable as it's ever been, and there's a good variety of guns and other instruments of destruction to play with. The one part that isn't so good, unfortunately, is the melee combat. Basic fisticuffs and blunt-object beatings are merely a bit clunky, but if you try to get yourself into a fight while holding a gun at close range to someone punching you in the face, you'll lose every time, unless you run a good distance away, turn back, and start firing. For some reason, the game just can't deal with aiming mechanics while you're face-to-face with an enemy; you're basically hosed.


Vice City is a sizable open-world environment, and driving around it can be a bit overwhelming at first. Odds are that unless you've had Vice City regularly inserted in your PS2 for the last couple of years, you won't remember too much of the city's layout. But even though it'll take a while to figure out all the roads and side streets, there's plenty of familiar scenery and landmarks that appear just about where you remember them. The game's minimap is about as useful as it's ever been in depicting where you are, and there is a larger map to check on in the pause menu. Still, it feels a bit antiquated, especially considering evolutions we've seen in recent games of this type, where the best possible paths for a mission are highlighted on the map. Heck, even an arrow pointer telling you where to turn would be nice.

Driving in the game is pretty much as it's been for years now. The vehicle physics are perhaps a bit more exaggerated than they were in Liberty City Stories, and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's extremely easy to spin out while taking turns in many of the game's cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but at the same time, some of the jumps and ridiculous crashes you can have make those wacked-out physics worthwhile. You will run into weird physics glitches from time to time, and you'll sometimes get stuck in pieces of the scenery. These issues aren't exactly new to the series, but they're as annoying as ever. In addition to cars and bikes, helicopters make their return in Vice City Stories, and they're among some of the most enjoyable vehicles in the game. The flying controls are surprisingly easy to handle, even with the lack of a right analog stick, and flying around the city is often much quicker than trying to drive it.

Liberty City Stories may have had all the usual GTA mission types, but it shortened nearly all of them to the point where it barely felt like you were doing anything of consequence. Vice City Stories corrects this by extending out the majority of its missions a great deal. You'll run into plenty of multitiered missions, with several objectives that appear over time. Of course, that does limit the appeal of the game as a handheld game, since it's tougher to play in quick bursts. But the tradeoff is that the missions are just better this time around. Yes, you're still killing rival gang members, stealing contraband, chasing down crooks in cars, and the like, but these missions are much more satisfying than anything found in LCS, and it'll take you a decent bit longer to complete the main story than the 10 hours or so that it did in last year's game.


Of course, story missions aren't the only thing to do in Vice City Stories. Along with the usual types of firefighting and vigilante missions, there's a whole empire system to contend with. The premise here is that each of the city's gangs holds a number of businesses around the city. These properties can house any number of illegal activities, ranging from prostitution and loan sharking to smuggling and drug dealing. As it happens, you can take over these businesses by sparking a fight with the gang members inside. Once you do, all you have to do is kill all the nearby gang members, walk inside the business, and smash up the place. After that's done, you can buy the property and install whatever type of illegal venture you please. Doing this earns you a nice chunk of cash each day, and each business you open acts as a save point. Making these business save points seems like Rockstar's way of trying to circumvent the limited save-point issue with the game design, but not being able to just save anywhere in a handheld game is still extremely annoying.

The game gives you the option to upgrade each of these businesses over time, both by simply sinking more cash into them, or by doing missions to up each business' reputation. Unfortunately, the missions are woefully uninspired. Each mission tasks you with 15 objectives done consecutively, though in reality, it's more like two. For a prostitution business, for example, you will pick up a hooker, drive her to a client, then pick up another hooker, drive her to another client, go pick up the first hooker, drive her to a new client, go grab the second hooker, chase down the client who ran off without paying, drive that second hooker to a new client, go back and rescue the first hooker from a client trying to beat her up, and so on, and so on, and so on. Calling these missions repetitive would be the understatement of a lifetime. In truth, the amount of cash you get just by leaving businesses at their default reputation is plenty, especially after you take over several of them, so there's no real reason to ever want to bother with the missions.

Multiplayer content returns to Vice City Stories as well, and it's a bit more fleshed out than in the last game. Up to six players can play via ad hoc, though unfortunately, there's still no online play. Apart from basic deathmatches and races, there's a variety of modes, including empire takedown, in which your gang must plant a bomb at the rival gang's base and defend it for 60 seconds to win; might of the hunter, which has you and your opponents racing for a hunter helicopter, with the successful player trying to kill the other players with it, and the other players trying to shoot it down; and taken for a ride, which tasks your team with stealing the rival gang's cars and transporting them back to your base without getting them destroyed or getting your own cars jacked. There are 10 modes in all, and for the most part, these modes seem better thought-out than in LCS. Still, your ability to have fun with them is entirely reliant on how many people you're able to get together to play with. Playing in these exceptionally large maps with just two, or even four, players makes it feel vacant and dull.

One aspect that Vice City did better than anything before it (including Grand Theft Auto III) was atmosphere, and Vice City Stories is just about as good in this regard. Everything about the cheeseball decade of the 1980s is on display here. Neon lights, slick sports cars, awful fashion, and fantastic music all permeate the experience. This game nails the same look that Vice City had, and the basic graphics engine looks a good bit better than it did in Liberty City Stories, especially regarding the frame rate, which stays largely consistent throughout the game. A few technical limitations do tend to still get in the way. The game's lighting is sometimes a bit off-putting, especially around sunset. It just makes everything look rather dark, and sometimes the glare from the sun will totally obscure your ability to see anything on the screen other than bright light. The biggest issue with Liberty City Stories was the fact that the environmental streaming would sometimes lag behind as you drove around, forcing you to watch big texture chunks pop in and even run into walls you simply didn't know were there. This is still an issue in Vice City Stories, though it's not quite as bad. You'll still run into fences you didn't know were there, and roads and buildings will regularly go from fully textured to crappy looking and back.

The game's audio is easily the high point. Vic, annoying as he is, is voiced well, as are the other characters voiced by celebrities and unfamiliar actors alike. The writing is still sharp, even if the overall storyline isn't. Of course, no GTA game is worth much without great radio stations, and much the way that Vice City set the standard for how music in games ought to be handled, Vice City Stories delivers another fantastic soundtrack. The same selection of radio stations from the PS2 game is on hand here, letting you enjoy the best of '80s rock, pop, dance, and hip-hop, among other genres. There are too many songs to list, but particularly atmospheric highlights include Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," Quiet Riot's "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)," and Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield." Of course, the mix goes much deeper and more eclectic than this, but it'd take forever to list all the fantastic songs included in the game.



The radio DJ chatter was another huge highlight of Vice City, and Vice City Stories brings back all the best DJs and their parodic banter. The best one of all is Fresh FM DJ Luke "Skywalker" Campbell, whom hip-hop aficionados will recognize as the foul-mouthed, sex-crazed mastermind of 2 Live Crew. You'll also hear plenty of bizarre, hysterically funny radio commercials that take plenty of jabs at the cinema, TV, music, fashion, and politics of the '80s. If there's any specific difference between the comedy in Vice City and that found in Vice City Stories, is that Vice City Stories is a bit meaner, a bit darker in its edge. Vice City certainly had its dark moments, but VCS seems a little more bent on taking angry jabs at aspects of American culture than the first game. This is less a flaw and more a stylistic choice, really. In fact, the only flaw with the audio at all is that it has a bad tendency to skip as you're driving around. You'll hear the UMD thrashing as it tries to keep up with the audio streaming, and you'll get occasional chunks of silence while it does this. This never seems to happen during cutscenes or when you're just walking around, but the radio will skip around a fair bit.
Vice City Stories is certainly an enjoyable follow-up to what Liberty City Stories offered last year. It's unfortunate that Rockstar wasn't able to craft a story as compelling as that of the console GTA games, and some of the technical limitations of the game engine are really beginning to stick out. Still, Vice City Stories does Grand Theft Auto in portable fashion quite well. It may not take the series into any kind of new territory, but it does the things it needs to in order to be an enjoyable GTA game more than well enough.

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GRAND THEFT AUTO : CHINATOWN WARS


The Goods:
  • Doesn't feel like a compromise compared to other GTA games  
  • Improves upon previous games with new features  
  • The massive Liberty City from GTAIV is instantly recognizable  
  • Controls mostly improve upon the DS version's  
  • Lengthy story, loads of optional activities, and fun multiplayer modes.
The Bads:
  • Multiplayer supports only two people  
  • Camera doesn't always afford you a clear view of action  
  • Some of the DS minigames don't work well on the PSP.
 Review of the game:

At first glance, Chinatown Wars could be mistaken for a return to the Grand Theft Auto series' humble 2D beginnings. The action is viewed from a more or less top-down perspective, and of course you still spend much of your time driving stolen cars and causing trouble with firearms. But the similarities between this superb PSP game and its '90s progenitors pretty much end there. Chinatown Wars actually has more in common with GTAs III and IV than it does with earlier games, and, remarkably, it even adds to and improves on the formula that made those games so successful. That's a bold statement for sure, but Chinatown Wars really is that good.


Set in the same instantly recognizable Liberty City as GTAIV (minus one island), Chinatown Wars tells the story of a power struggle within the Triad gangs from the perspective of Huang Lee, whose crime-boss father has recently been murdered. Huang flies to Liberty from Hong Kong to avenge his father, and predictably becomes embroiled in the war between those hoping to step into the dead man's shoes. As Huang, you advance the story--which should take you about nine hours to play through--by undertaking missions for a number of different characters within the Triad organization, as well as for one or two people outside of it. Many of these missions involve the usual mix of driving fast, killing people, and not getting caught by the cops, but there are plenty of varied and memorable missions as well.

For the most part, Chinatown Wars plays just like any other GTA game, which is an achievement in itself. Basic controls for movement and car-jacking are mapped to the same button positions that they are on other platforms. The uncomplicated on-foot and vehicle controls are largely the same (sprint becomes accelerate, shoot is still shoot), so even those of you with no prior GTA experience should have no trouble picking them up quickly. There are some great options to make the game even more user-friendly as well, such as autotargeting for drive-by shootings and a subtle steering assist that automatically straightens up your vehicle so that it's parallel with the road that you're on. There's even an option to superimpose GPS directions directly onto the street, which works a lot better than having to look down at the map on the bottom screen.

One downside to Chinatown Wars being so uncompromising in its attempt to replicate the GTA experience is that, because the PSP has fewer buttons than other systems, you're occasionally required to use them in ways that aren't entirely comfortable. The select button gets a lot of use, and you have to hit up on either the D pad or the analog nub to reposition the camera behind yourself while running around on foot using the other to control your movement, for example. It's not a big problem, and in some respects the PSP version's controls are a significant improvement over those of the DS original. Switching between weapons is much easier now that you don't have to use a touch screen for it, and thrown weapons (grenades, flashbangs, Molotov cocktails) that were unwieldy on the DS are now so easy to use that even being at the controls of a fast-moving vehicle doesn't rule them out. Elsewhere, the fact that Chinatown Wars was originally designed for the DS hurts the PSP version: Many of the minigames that were fun to complete using the stylus and touch screen don't work as well now that they've been adapted for play with the analog nub and shoulder buttons. Hot-wiring parked cars and searching dumpsters for weapons or discarded food still work well enough, but previously great minigames, such as tattooing gang recruits and making your own Molotov cocktails at the gas station, aren't much fun at all now. Regardless of how well they've been adapted for the PSP, what all of these minigames have in common is that they're quick, rarely challenging enough to halt your progress, and mandatory only once.


Story missions are also mandatory only once, but Chinatown Wars is the first game in the series to let you replay any mission that you've beaten previously in an attempt to achieve a higher score or a faster time. Another great addition for missions is the "trip skip" option that, if you choose to retry an eligible mission immediately after failing it, lets you bypass the road trip at the start of the mission and get right back into the action that killed you on your last attempt. None of the missions are so difficult that you should fail them more than once or twice, but this is a welcome feature nonetheless, and one that will hopefully be implemented in other GTA games down the road.

When you're not carrying out missions handed to you by central characters and by random pedestrians that you encounter, there are an impressive number of other things to do in Liberty City, some old, some new. For example, stealing a cop car, an ambulance, a cab, a fire truck, or a noodle delivery van will give you the option to make some money impersonating those vehicles' rightful owners. And if you successfully steal a delivery van that's being used to transport drugs or weapons and get it back to one of your secluded safe houses, you get to keep its contents. Weapons can be tricky to obtain this way because the Ammu-Nation drivers are invariably well armed. But stealing drugs is far less challenging, and if you get them for free then making a profit is inevitable when you meet with any of the 80 dealers who, once you find them, can be traded with to make relatively easy money. That's provided that there are no police in the immediate vicinity, because they'll either spook the dealer before you can make the deal or wait for you to close it and then move in to make arrests. Interacting with a dealer in any way adds him to your GPS system's database for future reference, so anytime you see a telltale blue dot on your map, it's well worth a quick detour to check it out.

Other things to look out for in Liberty City include parked vehicles that initiate checkpoint races and delivery missions when you climb into them, unique stunt jumps that are set up so that you can crash through billboards, a go-kart race track, and 100 security cameras that can be destroyed using grenades or Molotovs. Chinatown Wars also sees the welcome return of Rampage missions, which are against-the-clock killing sprees that challenge you to kill a certain number of enemies using a specific weapon, sometimes with an AI-controlled henchman or two at your side.


 Incidentally, weapons are in plentiful supply and can be ordered from Ammu-Nation's Web site using your occasionally sluggish in-game PDA. There are more than 20 different weapons to play with in Chinatown Wars, including everything from fists, flashbangs, and flamethrowers to swords, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Most weapons fall into either the ranged, melee, or thrown classes as far as controls go, and all perform their jobs admirably. The sniper rifle is unique in that it comes into play only in specific missions, must be assembled via a simple minigame before use, and turns the entire screen into a crosshair. Proximity mines that you drop at your feet are also a fun addition to the GTA arsenal, though they remain armed for only a few seconds before they explode without provocation. The most powerful weapons become readily available only toward the end of the game, which is just as well because as soon as you get your hands on a flamethrower or an armful of flashbangs, they make subsequent missions much easier.

Even with so many readily available weapons at your disposal, the Liberty City Police Department is an ever-present danger, and they're quick to give chase if they witness you doing anything untoward. Similarly to previous GTA games, a rating of between one and six stars lets you know how badly the police want to get their hands on you. The more trouble you cause the higher your rating, and the higher your rating the more cops will come after you. With a one-star rating, you rarely have more than one or two patrol cars on your case, but by the time you get up to the maximum six stars, you can expect roadblocks, search helicopters, and riot vans.


Traditionally, getting away from the police in a GTA game has involved outrunning them, finding a secluded spot to lay low, or ducking into a Pay 'n Spray auto shop to give your car a makeover. You could fight the police if you really wanted to, but your aggression would generally just anger them more. In Chinatown Wars, you have an additional option that turns the old system on its head to some degree, and the resulting car chases are better than those in any previous game as a result. The new system is simple but immensely satisfying; if you have a three-star wanted rating, destroying three cop cars will knock it down to a two-star rating, and so on. You can destroy the cop cars either by crashing into them at great speed or by racing around and narrowly missing environmental obstacles in the hope that they'll make a mistake and crash themselves. The key thing to remember is that you have to destroy the cop cars without actually killing the cops inside, so stepping out of your vehicle with a rocket launcher isn't the way to play on this occasion.

The in-game camera does a superb job of following you around for the most part, and you can reposition it behind you at any time with a quick (if slightly awkward) tap of the D pad, but it seems unavoidable that your view will still be obscured from time to time. There are a lot of tall buildings in some neighborhoods that get in the way when the camera is slow to reposition itself, and good luck if you're involved in a gunfight while surrounded by trees--you won't be able to see much of anything. The verticality of Liberty City's architecture adds to its already impressive sense of scale, but occasionally it gets in the way of the gameplay.

On the subject of gameplay, taking advantage of the local multiplayer support for two people in Chinatown Wars is arguably even more fun than playing through the story. Support for more players or via Wi-Fi would be welcome, of course, but there's a great selection of modes here that are a blast in spite of the low player count. There are races that almost always involve you destroying one another's vehicles or ditching them when you find a faster vehicle, especially if you opt for the Death Race variant and set the default vehicles as tanks. There's a Stash Dash mode in which you rush across the city and fight for the controls of a delivery van, after which you attempt to make deliveries while your opponent does anything they can to stop you. And there's a surprisingly fun one-on-one deathmatch mode called Liberty City Survivor that's action-packed from start to finish because police are watching your every move and are quick to join the fray the moment you give them an excuse to. Defend the Base mode challenges you to work together and prevent a number of targets that are coming under fire from being destroyed for a period of time, and Gang Bang is an objective-based game in which you're each accompanied by a number of henchmen and take turns to attack and defend your respective assets. Gang Bang games can take a long time because the winner not only needs to destroy a series of objectives, but must also plant a bomb that takes several seconds--an eternity when you're unable to defend yourself--to arm. Noticeable lag affects all of these modes intermittently, but it's rarely so severe that it's detrimental to gameplay.


In addition to local multiplayer support, Chinatown Wars offers Wi-Fi functionality that doesn't involve head-to-head gameplay but is still pretty neat in its own right. After exchanging details with other players, you can send messages to each other in-game, trade weapons or other items, and even exchange GPS locations that you've marked as favorites. If you connect to the Rockstar Social Club, you can also upload your in-game stats to the site's leaderboards and unlock a couple of action-packed bonus missions to play after you've beaten the main story. Minigames on the Social Club Web site can also be played to earn money and prizes that become available to you in-game the next time you sync your high scores.

It's hard to imagine anyone with even passing interest in Chinatown Wars not having a great time with it, but what's even more impressive than the open-world gameplay is the quality of its presentation. Seeing GTAIV's Liberty City on the PSP might not have the same "Wow!" factor that seeing it on the DS earlier this year did, but even the texture pop-in that's occasionally noticeable when driving at high speed is easy to overlook when every inch of your surroundings looks this great. Cutscenes are impressive in a different way; they're not animated, and it's disappointing that none of the characters are voiced, but the quality of the stylized illustrations is uniformly high, and the series' dark and self-referential humor is evident in practically every line of conversation.

Other than lacking any voice work for key characters, the audio in Chinatown Wars does very little wrong. Eleven radio stations (including the DS game's original five) offer instrumental rock, metal, electronic, dance-punk, dub, hip-hop, house, and jazz tracks that either complement or serve as perfect counterpoints to the action depending on which you listen to. Furthermore, every item in the city has a believable sound effect associated with it, whether it be the shattering of glass when you destroy a bus stop, the squelch of a pedestrian becoming a roadkill statistic, the satisfying spin of a minigun, or something as mundane as the thud of a traffic cone being displaced.


With its handful of extra story missions, significantly improved audio and visuals, and mostly superior control scheme, the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is even better than the DS original. It's also better than either of the other Grand Theft Auto games for the PSP (Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories), and unlike those games, in no way does it feel like a scaled-down handheld version of a proper GTA game. Don't let the art style or the presence of simple minigames fool you: Chinatown Wars is every bit as deserving of its mature rating as previous games. It's also one of the best GTA games yet.

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KINGDOM HEARTS : BIRTH BY SLEEP


The Goods:
  • Combat is fun and flashy, and it evolves as you play  
  • Boss fights put a fun spin on Disney characters and sets  
  • Great visuals capture the spirit of the source material  
  • Multiplayer arenas are entertaining  
  • Good-sized campaign.
The Bads:
  • Camera can be a nuisance  
  • A lot of repetition, from environments to music  
  • Terra's voice acting is abysmal  
  • Long load times and frame rate drops.
 Review of the game:

Kingdom Hearts fans have spent quality time with Sora and Roxas; now they can add three new characters to the list: Ventus, Terra, and Aqua. These close friends are the protagonists in the newest entry in the series, Birth by Sleep, and you play as all three of them on your way to unraveling mysteries that shed new light on the events of the original Kingdom Hearts. Yet while the playable characters may be different, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep treads familiar ground. You piece together an overarching story with themes of friendship, light versus dark, and true identity all while exploring colorful Disney-themed worlds and interacting with classic Disney characters. This intriguing Square/Disney mixture has served the series well, as have great boss fights and flashy keyblade action. This prequel inherits those assets but also some of the awkwardness that has plagued previous games. The platforming is a bit clumsy, and the camera and lock-on system can both lead to awkward moments. The game's structure also leads to some repetition. You explore many of the same areas, fight many of the same enemies, and view some of the same cutscenes three times over, which might make you wish Birth by Sleep featured the never-ending parade of cameos and Disney worlds of the console games. But mechanical flaws and occasional tedium aside, both series fans and newcomers will feel at home with this good, fun third-person adventure.


An opening cutscene introduces you to Birth by Sleep's three main adventurers, and you must decide which you wish to play as first. Eventually, you repeat this step twice more and explore the developing tale from three angles so that you can reveal every truth the game harbors. The overarching story has all the hallmarks of a brooding Square/Enix story--internal struggles, strained friendships, battles between good-hearted heroes and menacing villains. In the midst of all this drama are charming Disney vignettes that see you experiencing familiar tales from a unique perspective. You fight alongside Prince Charming, protect Snow White from attacking fiends, and see the dark side of the infamous mirror, mirror on the wall, among many other scenarios. As these three characters, you witness some of the same scenes, venture down many of the same corridors (which feature the same enemy attack patterns each time), and even repeat a boss fight or two using the same tactics. The repetition is part and parcel of Birth by Sleep's structure, but you will eventually long for more environmental and storytelling variety.

Nonetheless, there are still plenty of character-specific tasks on each of the three play-throughs. You fight (mostly) different bosses and cross paths with Disney characters at different points during their own tales, occasionally meeting up with one or both of the other leading players before once again departing on your own personal journey. Time spent with Ventus and Aqua is largely rewarding. The young and energetic Ventus is well meaning enough to be appealing but not so earnest as to be annoying. Aqua is thoughtful and focused, and she provides a mature counterpoint to Ven's gung-ho attitude. Both characters are voiced well; unfortunately, the same can't be said of the brooding Terra. The character struggles with the darkness within him, yet the actor voicing him can't express angst, excitement, sincerity, or any other emotion for which the script calls. Every line sinks like a stone, and the story suffers as a result. Terra's terrible voicing is most noticeable when he shares scenes with Disney characters, mostly because their voices are uniformly excellent and absolutely comparable to the original source.


Fortunately, great care was taken with each familiar environment. A few of them are on the bland side, but most capture the spirit of the film that inspired them. You meet Snow White in a field drenched in sunlight; Cinderella's pumpkin carriage is as magical as you remember. Every character looks perfectly parallel to the animated forms that graced the silver screen, so you immediately understand and empathize with them. Birth by Sleep is a great-looking game, though the bright and attractive visuals come with some caveats. Most notably, the long load times are a real drag, even if you select the full install option from the main menu. The frame rate also takes the occasional dip, usually after one of the lengthy loading screens, though one dungeon battle suffers from major, uncomfortable slowdown throughout. The audio is occasionally annoying (the siren that signals low health is one such nuisance), but Kingdom Hearts and Disney fans alike will enjoy hearing some familiar tunes as they hop from one world to the next. It's unfortunate that some of the musical loops are so short and repeat so often; you may never want to hear "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" for the remainder of your days. 

Luckily, while the combat does veer toward the button-mashing side, it's fun, looks fantastic, and evolves in meaningful ways as you play. Armed with a keyblade, you bash on a variety of enemies called the unversed. Each character feels different; Ventus is quick with his blade, Terra takes a more deliberate approach, and Aqua is agile and acrobatic. The three protagonists begin with a specific and small selection of special skills, but as you level up, you open up new slots for additional abilities. Spells and skills level up as well, and you can combine them to unlock new and more powerful moves. Furthermore, as you develop relationships with various characters, you earn associated dimension links, or d-links, which let you take on the battle style and skills of other characters, including Disney heroes and villains. On standard difficulty, Birth by Sleep isn't so challenging that you'll get much tactical advantage from frequently utilizing d-links, but it's one of many ways to refresh the action if it starts feeling repetitive. Further energizing the combat are the various keyblades you collect; heightened attack modes called command styles; and showy special moves called shotlocks. Battles explode with color, and spells and skills have you twirling about the screen, launching enemies into the air with whirlwinds and smashing them with blades of ice, among many other possibilities. Great animations and a solid sense of impact keep the action lively and entertaining, even when the easier and longer sequences threaten to get tedious.


The combat shines during Birth by Sleep's excellent boss fights, which feature some loathsome fiends that will have you looking at various Disney set pieces in a new light. On standard difficulty, combat isn't normally too challenging, but this game isn't the cakewalk of Kingdom Hearts II. It's fun to adjust to the various patterns of the bosses or perhaps switch to a different set of moves that provides better offensive capabilities. The bosses run the visual and tactical gamut, from ground-pounding behemoths to agile swordsmen, and while a few stand out as too easy or too hard, these battles are great fun. You may run into occasional problems with the camera and lock-on systems, however. The camera can't always keep up with the boss you've targeted--or sometimes even standard enemies. As a result, you may lose your target lock at inopportune moments or find the camera facing your character from across the arena. And as in other Kingdom Hearts games, the camera can still become a nuisance in tighter spaces, though this minor annoyance isn't apt to interfere too often.

Platforming has also been an Achilles heel for the series, and the general awkwardness of the jumping makes a few sections, such as Ventus' fetch quest in Cinderella's abode, more bothersome than boisterous. Happily, there are few such sequences, and there's always a fun boss fight around the corner to make up for these small transgressions. However, there are a few other noncombat activities, with the command board being the best of them. This is a surprisingly complex board game in which you can earn and improve your skills outside of battle. You can play it versus the AI or against another local player, though this isn't the only way to enjoy Birth by Sleep with others. By accessing the mirage arena within the single-player game, you can meet up with local players in ad hoc mode and battle them in Versus mode or take on increasingly difficult waves of unversed cooperatively in Arena mode. Given that competitive play is best with a full contingent of six players, it's a pity that there's no online play, even though the game describes these modes as "online."


Nevertheless, Birth by Sleep's multiplayer is really enjoyable, particularly the cooperative arenas. Teaming up with a buddy or two to take down a towering boss, particularly if the players are at about the same level, is immensely rewarding. Furthermore, you earn medals that you can cash in for new abilities and other goodies, including team-based abilities like group heals. You can even forge d-links with other players, which gives you access to their special moves in battle. A kart racer variant called Rumble Racing rounds out the multiplayer suite, but the controls and physics are so weak that it barely warrants a mention. Unfortunately, it appears as a minigame in the single-player portion, though the other minigames you encounter, such as a cute ice cream-themed rhythm game, are relatively harmless.

Like previous games in the franchise, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep provides good value for your money. Slashing through all three story strands may take you 25 hours or more, and the command boards and additional modes provide reasons to return once you've left the story behind. It's unfortunate that Birth by Sleep relies so much on repetition and that a few foibles from the series remain largely untouched. These and a few other woes hold this PSP exclusive back from greatness, but vibrant visuals and snazzy, evolving combat will likely charm fans and newcomers alike into forgiving most of the flaws. Birth by Sleep harbors few surprises, but it's a fun and comfortable addition to a quality series.

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VALKYRIA CHRONICLES II


The Goods:
  • Satisfying turn-based strategy  
  • Deep, RPG-style progression and customisation  
  • Good value--with new multiplayer modes and a 40-hour campaign  
  • Attractive anime art style.
The Bads:
  • The small maps are often recycled.
 Review of the game:

Valkyria Chronicles II squeezes the smart, turn-based strategy and deep, RPG-like customisation of its PlayStation 3 predecessor onto the PSP with great success. But for a few tweaks, the core experience is unaltered, and the familiar, hand-drawn art style has likewise been carried over. The small, often-recycled battle maps are disappointing, but the game's few shortcomings are easy to forgive in the face of the same elegant, chesslike gameplay that made the first game great.


Two years have passed since the events of Valkyria Chronicles. The small, neutral nation of Gallia is still caught between mighty opposing forces in the game's fantasy analogue for World War II. Now, though, an army of Gallian rebels is rising up against the country's ruler, Archduchess Cordelia, after she was outed in the previous game as one of the Darcsen, a persecuted, scapegoated race. It falls to your squad, the ragtag bottom class of Lanseal, a Gallian military academy, to end this civil war. The plot will hold your interest, though it can't match the sweeping epic of its predecessor, and no character is as memorable as that game's icy poster girl, Selvaria Bles.

Lanseal Academy is part high school, part boot camp. It's set on a campus imagined in Valkyria Chronicles' whimsical "European" style, all turrets and courtyards. Here, teens take classes, deal with teen problems--crushes, bullying, angst--and become soldiers. When lead character Avan Hardins joins Lanseal to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, a former student, he is assigned to Class G, into which the least promising kids are sorted. There he is made the head of the class, and so head of the squad, despite lack of academic aptitude or apparent commitment. Though Avan (personality: hungry) is not as likable as the leads of the previous game, it's the ensemble cast that really matters. Among those supporting characters, with their own quirks, backstories, and side missions, you'll find enough charm to keep you involved. The fluffy teen dramas of Class G are well balanced by the hard edge of anti-Darcsen racism, manifested as bullying within the school and as violent ethnic cleansing further afield.

That large cast of classmates is divided between the distinct infantry classes that define the essential rock-paper-scissors action: shocktroopers are strong against lancers, for instance, and lancers are strong against tanks, while scouts are vulnerable but cover long distances quickly, with tanks robust but costly to move across the field. Battles are played out via a command mode, with a top-down view of the map, and a third-person action mode, in which individual characters are steered around the battlefield. The distance over which a unit can be moved is strictly limited by its reserve of action points, with a single attack allowed in each move, while the number of moves that can be made per turn is limited by your reserve of command points.


From that simple but solid scheme of turn-based action, Valkyria Chronicles II grows a deep, subtle battle system, layered with elements to be customised, levelled, and deployed creatively against the enemy. Beyond the development of new and better weapons and the sinking of experience points into levelling up classes, each character has a unique set of potentials--special abilities triggered by certain battlefield conditions--as well as a set of particular friends alongside whom they fight best. Avan, as leader of the squad, can issue special orders that bestow temporary stat boosts on units. This sequel also adds branching subclasses to the mix, letting a scout, for instance, be specialised into a sniper or veteran scout, and then a sniper into an elite or antitank sniper.

By the end of the ample story-based campaign, around 40 hours long, you'll have a huge, diverse, uniquely customised squad at your command. That's when the new ad hoc multiplayer modes (two-player versus and co-op for up to four players) will get interesting--assuming you've got a friend as committed to Valkyria Chronicles as you. The multiplayer modes are accessible early on, with more maps and missions unlocked as you progress. Newcomers to the game, therefore, won't be able to join veterans in all of their unlocked content. But the modes work well; in the versus mode, the game is at its most online chesslike, with options to set time limits for turns. In co-op, you share a turn, making your moves at the same time as your allies, enabling pincer movements and other strategic manoeuvring.

The presentation of cutscenes, menus, and missions forgoes the first game's storybook layout of pages and chapters, replacing it with academy mode. This is a 3D map of Lanseal Academy, a hub from which you can access the R&D department to develop weapons and tanks; the drill grounds to level up classes; the store to purchase side missions and to learn new orders; and the briefing room to access missions and multiplayer modes. In a nice touch, the campus and its grounds change in appearance from month to month, with the game set over the course of a year.

When they become available, cutscenes can be accessed from the academy mode, labelled on the campus map. There's the odd animated cutscene, but mostly they are rendered with still portraits of characters and dialogue balloons, partially voiced. The proportion of time spent in these and on the battlefield is just right, though the nonessential scenes can be skipped over by the exposition-averse. The art still looks good, particularly in the anime cutscenes, but is let down by the character models of the action proper, whose slight blockiness will only remind fans of the original game how crisp everything looked before, though that's more down to the technical limitation of the platform than a fault on the game's part.


Missions come in three varieties: key, which must be completed to progress through the year; story, which move the plot along and are unlocked with each month; and free, which are good for practice and levelling. The objectives are predictable--defend a camp, capture a camp, escort a vehicle, collect supply boxes--but are spiced up by environmental challenges (sandstorms or lightning strikes, for example) and by the presence of special enemy units, from whom you can pick up new weapon plans. The biggest disappointment is the size of the maps, mostly comprising three or four often-recycled small regions interconnected by gateway camps--by capturing these camps, you can use the gateways to deploy to your squad members in the connected area. Coupled with the five-unit limit in each area, it's only this compactness of the battlefields that makes Valkyria Chronicles II feel like a "smaller," lesser game than the console original.

There's a lot to get to grips with--even before starting to experiment with homemade temporary weapon coatings--and this is not a game for hand-holding. Staying on top of the stats, symbols, tech trees, and nested menus will keep you working hard, and the game especially punishes laziness or recklessness later on, but the experience as a whole is cerebral and rewarding. Except for the puny maps, Valkyria Chronicles II deftly expands on the original; even the relative downgrade in graphics, dictated by the handheld format, doesn't keep it from being an attractive game.

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PHANTASY STAR PORTABLE 2


The Goods:
  • Challenging real-time combat  
  • Great gear and character customization  
  • Fun online and ad hoc multiplayer  
  • Numerous unlockables and good replayability  
  • Good story.
The Bads:
  • Irritating party AI  
  • Repetitive mission objectives  
  • Shallow exploration.
 Review of the game:

Phantasy Star Portable 2 is an action role-playing game that boasts fast real-time combat and deep customization options. Its fiendishly large monsters and rich weapon variety are reminiscent of Monster Hunter, but PSP2's gameplay is more approachable. The game struggles with both wonky AI and a lack of mission variety, but the repetitive nature of the missions is less noticeable in multiplayer where even replaying them over and over again with friends can be a lot of fun. This is a challenging adventure that's enjoyable despite some defects.


The game opens in the Gurhal system three years after the defeat of the invading seed monsters. You're cast as the newest recruit of Little Wing, a mercenary group that pairs you with a young girl in the fight to save the universe. Although the plot uses simple, cliche themes, your sweet, but troubled partner draws you in as you unravel her tragic history. Interesting substories also serve to flesh out the cast, providing witty banter while you explore themes of heartbreak and loss. For example, one mission has you searching for an ally's attacked homeland, while another unveils a sad romance between two party members.

Repetitive missions mar exploration to a degree by recycling objectives and map aesthetics. Missions are divided into several types, with most giving you the task of eliminating all enemies, which grows tedious on easier difficulties. The more compelling missions test your mettle by applying time limits and restricting equipment, while both urgent and tactical missions provide intriguing side quests and a much needed change of pace. Mundane exploration is limited to large, desolate mazes, with few objects providing interactivity. The simplistic puzzles usually involve mind-numbing key collection, but a few other brainteasers--such as traps and tricky teleportation lasers--spruce up the action.

An intense real-time battle system wards off boredom by providing sufficient combat depth, lessening the game's reliance on button mashing without slowing the pace. Although you're limited to only four distinct classes--including two melee classes, a caster class, and a magical-warrior blend--you're able to use abilities from outside your class, which frees you to play more creatively. A wide variety of skills enliven the gameplay, and a fun chaining system keeps pace by restoring your ability bar each time you strike, so you'll rarely run out of energy for special skills. Chaining attacks also temporarily boosts strength, which grants you a combative edge. An intuitive blocking system lets you counter attacks if you defend immediately before a hit; blocking also reduces the status infliction rate, making it a valuable tactic during boss fights. Enemy elemental types increase tactical depth by challenging you to use the appropriate elemental gear. Ice weapons deal greater damage against fire-type opponents, for example. A highly convenient quick-select menu prevents equipment juggling from becoming a chore; you're able to instantly swap gear for the best elemental defenses and attack boons, as well as use health items.

A few irksome party-AI hiccups and combat bugs complicate battles. Although you're able to give basic tactical commands, teammates frequently ignore them or respond too slowly, often neglecting to heal you. Party members also hesitate to engage enemies and often run themselves into walls whenever you turn a corner. Some large enemies occasionally clip through you or trap you, which only worsens matters because you're unable to defend while stuck underfoot. The targeting system is slightly finicky as well, often bouncing the reticle to pick up items on the ground in the midst of fights, which can be a distraction.


Challenging enemies and multiple difficulty modes lessen mission repetitiveness. The game unveils plenty of massive monsters to hunt, including giant bugs and fire-breathing dragons. Standard enemies recycle some of the same primitive attacks, but they're far from pushovers because of optional difficulty grades, which dramatically increase a monster's level and brute strength; this feature greatly intensifies battles while boosting replayability. Numerous menacing bosses abound, and each takes some skill to outmaneuver, often inflicting your team with potent status effects.

An impressive array of customization options facilitates character personalization. You can design a persona from the ground up, tweaking everything from intricate hairstyles to kitty ears, or you can import a character from the game's predecessor. You can also change your look between missions, which motivates you to unlock accessories. You have a wealth of weapons at your disposal, ranging from lightsabers to dancing fans, as well as a slew of special skills to link to them via a simple modification process. Weapon augmentation amplifies attack power but strangely overlooks other weapon stats. Armor upgrades use a similar system, letting you summon monsters or increase character stats by linking ability modules to armor. Furthermore, you can extend your weapon proficiency beyond your class limits or change your class, which frees you to personalize your fighting style.

Multiplayer enlivens gameplay by varying objectives in both ad hoc and infrastructure modes. Both let you play through regular missions cooperatively or engage in fun player-versus-player action in battle missions, which have you capturing enemy flags, collecting money, or slaying opponents for the highest score. A convenient onscreen keyboard and auto comments help you communicate with ease, making party management painless. Lag poses a minor problem during attack chains in both modes, but unfair respawn points are more annoying, putting you at a disadvantage when you respawn on top of opponents.


Striking CG cutscenes highlight the game's key moments, while soft, subtle character artwork achieves a unique look. Characters move fluidly as they perform flashy abilities, though they're a little roughly modeled. Barren environments undermine the aesthetic appeal; areas lack textural richness for some floor paneling, while unremarkable orchestral themes and noisy attack sounds accompany exploration. Muddled combat voice-overs also detract from the presentation.

The main storyline boasts more than 40 hours of gameplay, but the figure doubles if you're inclined to battle secret bosses, complete side quests, or surpass the standard level 99 limit. Playing multiplayer and seeking unlockables also extend replayability, while customization and tough difficulty modes hook you. Though repetitive mission objectives and simplistic puzzles shortchange exploration, Phantasy Star Portable 2 offers enough features to please.

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TEKKEN : DARK RESURRECTION


The Goods:
  • Some of the best graphics to hit the PSP so far  
  • Well-implemented ghost exchange systems  
  • Lots of modes  
  • Plenty of great characters  
  • Delivers the same great Tekken gameplay you've come to expect from the series.
The Bads:
  • It can be tricky to hit the D pad's diagonals just right.
 Review of the game:

The Tekken series has always done well in arcades, but it truly came into its own as a home release on Sony's various video game consoles. The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 have received the brunt of Namco's Tekken series, but now it's time for the PlayStation Portable to get into the act with a port of the latest arcade upgrade for the series, Tekken: Dark Resurrection. This game builds on the content and characters from Tekken 5, adding more fighters, more moves, new backgrounds, new customization options, and more. Plus, it's one of those amazing portable games that raises the bar and resets your expectations about what a portable machine can do.


The largest factor in resetting those expectations comes from the game's graphics. While the PSP doesn't pull off a polygon-perfect port of the arcade game, the characters look and move as well as you could hope. The corners seem to have been cut in the backgrounds, which occasionally sport a grungy texture or two, and in the pre- and postfight animation, which isn't quite as smooth as the fighting. Those things aside--and they don't get in the way at all--Tekken: Dark Resurrection gives off a real "this platform shouldn't be able to look this hot" vibe. On top of that, the game's loading times are pretty manageable, averaging somewhere under 10 seconds between fights, and even less if it's a rematch on the same background with the same fighters. So the visual quality doesn't come at the expense of speed, which is great.

The gameplay in Tekken: Dark Resurrection is also spot-on with what you'd expect from the series. The controls are responsive, though the occasionally tricky diagonals on the PSP's D pad took an hour or so of getting used to before we could pull off combos and juggles without trouble. If you like, you can also use the analog stick to control movement. The fighting itself is right in line with previous Tekken games, though there are three characters here that weren't in Tekken 5. Armor King returns to the lineup, and there are two all-new characters. Lili is a rich girl with street-fighting skills, and Dragunov is a Russian special forces operative who fights in a sambo style with plenty of powerful strikes. Both of the new characters fit right into the lineup and seem as deep and interesting as the rest of the cast. Also, unlike most Tekken games, Dark Resurrection starts with the complete cast of 34 characters available, so you won't have to dig through story mode multiple times to get all of the fighters.

Players who are familiar with the Tekken series will be right at home with the available modes, many of which come from Tekken 5 on the PlayStation 2. In addition to the arcade mode, which lets you unlock crazy prerendered ending videos, there are plenty of submodes, including a robust practice mode, team battles, time attack, and a quick battle that lets you pick your first opponent. There's a versus mode that lets two players compete locally over an ad hoc connection, using the same sort of lobby system that has appeared in previous PSP fighting games. You can also merge your rankings with other players' rankings, so you can have something to compare your time-attack times against.

The best part of the game is the way it uses artificial intelligence profiles. This is something that appeared in Tekken 5, but the ghost recording system and online options make it more worthwhile here. Ghosts are profiles that are meant to replicate another player's fighting style. While it certainly isn't perfect, they do seem to make for more interesting and unpredictable fights than the average fighting AI. You mainly fight these profiles in the Tekken dojo mode. Here, you move from dojo to dojo, fighting your way to the top of each one by beating these ghost profiles. The game comes with plenty of ghosts already present, but you can also record your own play to make your own ghost and then share it with your friends locally. You can also get online and download packs of ghost players for use in the single-player game, which is cool. Getting online also allows you to upload your ghosts for use by other players. It's a shame that there isn't any online combat, but considering that the Tekken series has yet to go online on any platform, it's not an altogether surprising omission.

In most of the game's modes, you earn money for winning fights. You can take those funds and use them to customize the look of your characters, much like in Tekken 5 or Virtua Fighter 4. There are plenty of pieces and colors to purchase, and they range from standard changes, like new hairstyles and glasses, to weird stuff, like a dog that clings to the back of Paul's gigantic haircut. Your ghosts carry these items, so you can give them a custom look before you send them out into the world to do your devious bidding.


The game contains a lot of solid music that plays while you're fighting, and the theater mode serves as a sound test, letting you listen to any of the music at any time. Additionally, the game has the same sound effects that Tekken 5 had, which makes the hits sound nice and hard, though the relative lack of bass on the PSP's stock speakers means they don't deliver quite as well as a set of good headphones will.

With plenty of modes to mess with and the promise of ghost exchanging, Tekken: Dark Resurrection is a long-lasting game that impressively delivers quality 3D fighting to the PSP. It makes smart additions while retaining everything that makes the Tekken series so popular in the first place. Fans of portable fighting games can't go wrong with this one.

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PATAPON 2


The Goods:
  • Hero abilities add a new layer to the gameplay  
  • Excellent audio and visuals  
  • Multiplayer is fun and offers new items  
  • Incredible number of varied mission types
The Bads:
  • New branching evolution system can be fiddly.
 Review of the game:

When Patapon came out in early 2008, its deep gameplay, stylish visuals, and unique mix of strategy and rhythm action helped it capture the attention of players across the globe. Now, a little more than a year later, Patapon 2 has arrived with new units, new abilities, a branching leveling system, and a brand-new multiplayer mode. The core mechanics of rhythm action and real-time strategy remain largely the same, but these new additions, as well as a host of unlockables, mean that Patapon 2 is well worth playing both for fans and new players to the series.


As in the first game, you play as a deity to the tiny, one-eyed tribal people called Patapon. The Patapon are sailing toward the end of the world when their ship is destroyed by a huge sea monster, and they call on you to help guide them once again. This primal race is commanded using the Drum of Valour, a tribal instrument that's controlled using the PSP's face buttons. You tap out short rhythms using the PSP's face buttons, with different rhythms for move, attack, defend, and so on. It's fairly simple at first, but the game soon introduces you to new button commands, while the strategy becomes deeper as you progress. The game is beguilingly cute but it's also incredibly deep, and its predecessor excepted, there's nothing out there quite like it.

The major new feature for Patapon 2 is the hero ability, which gives one of your chosen units the power to unleash super moves. The hero attack is activated by tapping out three sets of beats with perfect timing, with the level of accuracy required changing based on your chosen difficulty level. These new attacks are the key to defeating the larger enemies and bosses in the game, and as you find new "memories" on the battlefield, you gain access to more and more different hero abilities. In addition to being powerful, they look really cool in action, and it's definitely worth experimenting with hero abilities to match your style of play.

Patapon 2 also includes some great new unit types. The Toripon is a birdlike creature that specialises in long-range attacks, as long as you avoid the enemy antiair weapons that take them down. The Robopon is a mech-inspired power unit that can charge in and smash enemy fortifications and units, which is great to unleash when you need to turn the course of battle. The Mahopon is a pretty weak unit defensively, but if you can keep it alive, it offers wizardlike powers such as superattacks and healing. Patapon 2 also builds on the first game's selection of minigames, with more-frequent rhythm action-esque interludes in which you can unlock new materials by tapping out rhythms in time to the music.


There's a lot of strategy outside of the battlefield in Patapon 2, and the unit creation and leveling systems are more in-depth than before. You can add new soldiers and level up your existing army by collecting items in each battle, and the new branching evolution system lets you create units that specialise in individual areas, such as speed or strength. This offers you a lot more freedom in terms of customisation, but it also requires you to get much more in-depth. It can become very fiddly to fine-tune lots of individual units once you've accrued a large army, and it can be time-consuming to flick through all of the menu screens. Upgrading units requires resources, some of which can be hard to find, but there's fun to be had revisiting levels in search of these items because levels often play out differently after you've beaten them previously and can even be altered by variable weather conditions.

Patapon 2's squad management is more user-friendly than the evolution process. You can tinker with the weapon, shield, and hero ability of each unit, or you can automatically optimise the loadout with the press of a button. The game offers hints on the areas in which your units should specialise, but it can sometimes be a bit confusing to figure out the best upgrades to make. Experimenting with different formations is one of the most fun aspects of the game, especially because it's just so much fun to see the Patapon dancing to your orders and battling it out onscreen. In addition to your hero, you only get to take three unit types into each battle, and you'll inevitably be forced to leave favorites behind when you find levels that they're not well suited for.

Whereas the first game was single-player only, Patapon 2 introduces multiplayer to the mix. This mode supports up to four players via local wireless, with game sharing for people who don't own the game and AI teammates to fill any gaps. There's only one game type: Each player controls a Patapon hero, and you have to work together to carry a giant egg to the end of the level. It's great fun to play with friends, with two players carrying the egg and the other two fending off enemy attacks, and if you get to the end of the level, all players have to tap out beats for the egg to hatch. This results in items for the host that can be taken into the host's single-player game, so multiplayer is well worth playing--especially if you're the host. The only downside is the lack of long-term appeal; a few more multiplayer game types would have added to the longevity.


Patapon 2 is incredibly charming, and everything from the adorable little warriors to the beautifully coloured backdrops is a delight to look at. Although it appears to be similar to the first game, it's actually a lot prettier, with more-detailed environments, weather effects, and units. The new robot units are a particularly welcome inclusion, contrasting nicely with the standard soldiers in the game. The audio style is tribe-like drums and bells, and though the childish chanting and repetitive beats can become annoying, especially for those not playing, there's no denying the hard work that has gone into the audio production.

Patapon 2 doesn't drastically change the formula, but substantial tweaks have been made across every aspect of the game. The hero abilities add a new layer to the core gameplay, the new units are brilliantly realised, and the multiplayer game mode is a welcome addition to the series. If you've yet to check out Patapon, then there's still nothing else out there quite like it, and players of the previous game should find new things to love in the sequel.

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DAXTER


The Goods:
  • Gorgeous, simply gorgeous  
  • Outstanding sound and music  
  • Wonderful adaptation of the standard Jak gameplay  
  • A lot of things to do in the game, and reason to play through again.
The Bads:
  • Some slight control and camera issues  
  • Still using the Jak formula, for better or for worse.
 Review of the game:

Daxter may be the fifth game in Sony's flagship Jak and Daxter franchise, but it's still responsible for many firsts. It's the first game in the series that doesn't star Jak, the once-mute-turned-brooding protagonist. It's the first game in the series to appear on a system other than the PlayStation 2. And it's the first time the PSP has ever looked so good. Simply put, fans of Jak and Daxter who were disappointed that the latest console release, Jak X: Combat Racing, strayed from the franchise's formula need not be disappointed any longer. Daxter is every bit as entertaining as its PS2 counterparts, looks absolutely stunning, and manages to pack the full console experience into a handheld without being dumbed down in the slightest. Frankly, the bar for PSP games, in terms of graphics and gameplay, has just been raised. Though Daxter is a little formulaic, especially for those familiar with previous Jak games, the formula works, and it works surprisingly well on the PSP.


Taking place directly before Jak II, Daxter follows the story of the so-named hero during the years that his buddy Jak was imprisoned, learning how to be an angst machine. Fortunately for you, it appears Daxter had plenty to do during that time: getting to star in an adventure all on his own to save Haven City from nefarious and dastardly...bugs. Yup, bugs. And to nail the point home, Daxter's primary weapon is a fierce...electric...flyswatter. From the game's entire premise to some of the more minute details, you'll experience a lot of the series' typical brand of irreverent humor, maybe even more so in this game because Daxter has always been the driving force behind it, and now you don't have to worry about sullen Jak bringing the mood down. It's in this way that the game is particularly endearing--not because it's unique or innovative, but because of how cohesively and effectively it takes an existing franchise and gives it a new spin.

If you've played either Jak II or Jak 3, you'll feel quite at home with Daxter, because the layout of Haven City and the mission-based structure of the gameplay are identical to those of the previous games. When the adventure begins, Daxter is...well, he's telling tall tales in a bar again, but shortly thereafter he begins employment at the Critter-Ridder Extermination Company. Since it's the only remaining exterminator shop that Haven City has left, and since there's suddenly a real infestation crisis (two problems which are not unrelated), Daxter has his hands full trying to pull his weight and prove his worth to the Critter-Ridder shop manager, Osmo.

In each level, you have several objectives to complete. There's the main objective that has been laid out for you, which might consist of killing enemies, destroying insect hives, or collecting objects. As you're playing through, you can also choose to do two optional secondary objectives, which are reminiscent of Jak games of old, collecting Metal Bug gems and precursor orbs. Though the mission is generally straightforward, completing the secondary objectives can sometimes prove to be a real challenge. Fortunately, you only need to clear the main objective to progress the story, so you can always return to collect all the items later. Playing cleanup is also easier later, since you'll often have better weapons and moves to get through the level more quickly. In fact, the way this works is done extraordinarily well, giving you quite an incentive to play through again to hunt for all the items.

The two tools at Daxter's disposal are his previously mentioned (very fierce) flyswatter, and an insecticide sprayer that gets some righteous upgrades in the later levels, to become a flamethrower and then a sonic blaster of sorts. Daxter is also able to do some light platforming, including double-jumping and scaling climbable-looking surfaces. The dynamic that is most interesting, however, is that his sprayer also serves as a propulsion device, allowing Daxter to hover or boost up in the air, giving him more distance and height than merely jumping would allow. Although this is mighty reminiscent of the water pump from Super Mario Sunshine, the mechanic works extremely well, if not better, in Daxter. You'll spend most of the game switching between the sprayer as a weapon and the sprayer as a platforming device, and it all works quite effortlessly.


Most of the gameplay has you proceeding from one area to the next, fighting, and maneuvering around various enemies and obstacles, and fighting large bosses, but there are some alternate gameplay elements along the way. One is the zoomer, which Daxter uses in a couple of different missions to chase down enemies or objectives that would be out of reach if he were simply on foot. There are a few other great mechanics, like the level that requires you to jump across the tops of moving trains, or the level that is practically taken out of Metal Gear Solid. Though none of these mechanics are particularly original, they're varied enough to keep you on your toes for the duration of the game. Also, as you collect precursor orbs, you'll be able to unlock dream sequence minigames. Each dream sequence borrows heavily from well-known movies, a couple more than once, like The Matrix, Indiana Jones (why did it have to be snakes?) and The Lord of the Rings. Though all of the game's minigames consist of virtually identical gameplay, tasking you to properly time hitting the PSP's directional pad and face buttons, they're a nice break from the run-and-gun gameplay, and they offer you the ability to unlock additional moves, like an uppercut, or to increase Daxter's health meter.

One of the immediately obvious things about Daxter is the game's stellar presentation. The graphics are simply beautiful. The animation quality both inside and outside of the cutscenes is as rich as it ever has been before. And you'll wander through several different gorgeous environments, even if most of the game's later levels are repeats of the earlier ones. The game also manages to run pretty large environments with minimal loading times and almost no loss of frame rate whatsoever. Whatever formula was used to get Daxter working so efficiently on the PSP should be used as the model for PSP games from here on out. If a game like Lumines is the equivalent of peeking through the keyhole of the PSP's graphic capabilities, Daxter kicks the door in. The sound is equally impressive, not missing a beat (literally) when it comes to detail. When you jump on the scooter, you'll hear the engine rev up until it reaches a nice steady gurgle. Every aspect of both the sound and music is fine-tuned, so you'll notice how effective the combination of buzzers, moving doors, and music presents something even as simple as the ambiance in an elevator. The voice acting is also outstanding, and Daxter is once again voiced by Newsies-star Max Casella, who nails Daxter's humor and awkwardness perfectly.

The game's most noticeable flaw is that it might take awhile to get used to the control and camera. 3D platformers are notoriously tricky when it comes to both these elements, especially on handheld systems. Both the camera and the control scheme are implemented about as well as can be expected (but not flawlessly) so it might take you a little while to get accustomed to moving around. And though the game is quite linear, sending you directly from one mission to the next, some of the levels are so open that you might backtrack a little more than you'd like. In some respects, this gives the game depth, but in others, you might find the repetition tiresome. For the most part, though, the game is both easy to follow and open-ended, making the gameplay fairly long without being tedious.


The single-player is rich enough to make the game worthwhile, but there is also a multiplayer mode, bug combat, that makes for a nice diversion. Essentially, as you play through the game, you'll find additional hidden pickups for use in multiplayer. These pickups are caged bugs, spells that you can assign to them, and boosts that will bump up their stats for the fights. After you've collected the items, you can exit out and play the bug combat mode, which is a turn-based version of rock-paper-scissors in which you can fight either the computer or a multiplayer opponent. Aside from collecting the items to make your bug as powerful as possible, there's little purpose to the bug combat. Still, it's a nice addition to an already solid game. There are also a few extra unlockables that you'll get from perfecting the game and/or hooking your PSP up to a copy of Jak X: Combat Racing. The most elusive pickups are a bunch of masks that Daxter can wear. They're pretty difficult to find, but you'll probably bump into the Jak mask just in time to rescue him from prison. The addition of all these extras, cheats, and little goodies gives Daxter a richness that many other games in the genre lack.

Daxter follows the Jak formula closely, but in the absence of a Jak game in the end of last year, Daxter plugs the hole almost perfectly, by offering console-rich action-platforming gameplay that is almost better because it's on the PSP. Setting new standards for what the PSP is capable of, especially when it comes to graphics, Daxter is going to be enjoyable for almost anyone, even people who might not normally be interested in the gameplay. If you're a PSP owner, platformer enthusiast or not, you simply can't go wrong with Daxter.

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DISSIDIA : FINAL FANTASY


The Goods:
  • The fighting is flashy and exciting  
  • Constant stream of unlockable rewards  
  • Tons of modes and features  
  • Fantastic visuals.
The Bads:
  • Disappointing story  
  • The camera can get troublesome.
 Review of the game:

Fan service? Absolutely. Fun? Unquestionably. Dissidia is a Final Fantasy fan's dream come true, the kind of crossover that's sure to make franchise aficionados giddy. Yet it's far more than just a love letter to series fanatics. Dissidia: Final Fantasy is an exuberant and addictive game in which showy one-on-one fighting and role-playing mingle so effortlessly that it's hard to pull yourself away. And the more you play, the more Dissidia keeps giving, showering you with extra features and in-game rewards as if you were in the center of a ticker-tape parade. The visual drama of battles is unfortunately undercut by some camera foibles, and the feeble narrative is out of step for a series renowned for excellent storytelling. Yet this is a generous package that offers untold hours of over-the-top spectacle that almost anyone can appreciate, even if they've never played or cared to play a Final Fantasy game.


If you are a fan of the series, however, you're probably curious about the story that confines the heroes of Square Enix's famous role-playing game series to a single universe. Heroes and villains from Final Fantasies I-X roam this world, where the gods Chaos and Cosmos have provided the balance that supports reality. When Chaos gains an upper hand, 10 brave warriors clash with 10 nefarious rivals in the hopes of saving the world as they know it. This is your opportunity to revisit old rivals on the battlefield--and to experience some unlikely possibilities. Cloud versus Sephiroth and Tidus versus Jecht are natural choices; but have you considered the idea of pitting Squall against Golbez, or Bartz against Ultimecia? Dissidia's story modes are crammed with such improbable scenarios, though the tale they tell is a disappointing mess of shallow cliches and awkward voice acting, stripping each character to the barest essentials. You'll follow each hero as he or she take parallel journeys, which involve finding Cosmos-curing crystals while occasionally stopping to hear Firion reminisce about roses and Squall grumble about, well, everything. The aftermath of this search is told through an additional story mode called Shade Impulse, in which you can choose your own playable hero in each chapter. And once you complete this story, Dissidia gifts you with even more chapters, more playable characters (it's best to discover who they are on your own), and much more. It isn't an involving tale, but there's a lot of it, and the more you play, the more the game gives you.

While the story won't be enough to captivate you, Dissidia's mix of role-playing and fighting will keep you hooked for some time. In the story modes, you move a battle piece that represents your fighter across a game grid where treasure chests and enemy engagements await. Each move on the grid consumes a destiny point; completionists will want to clear each board of all items and foes without overspending the allotted points, though doing so isn't necessary to progress. It's simply a contrivance (and a good one at that) to move you from one encounter to the next so that you can level up your character, earn funds (Gil, of course) used for purchasing new equipment, and unlock hundreds of new items, moves, and accessories. This constant flow of rewards is the basis of Dissidia's addictive nature. It starts with the promise of a better sword for Cloud and becomes an obsession with unlocking new voice samples for your fighters, multiplayer fighting arenas, and even enhancements to how quickly you receive other enhancements. It's an embarrassment of pleasures.


But even this muscular network of rewards wouldn't be able to support weak combat, and fortunately, Dissidia's fighting system is great fun even when taken on its own terms. You won't find all the subtleties and tight balancing of a traditional fighter, but the combat is vibrant and exciting, and the fighting system is intricate enough to keep battles tense and dynamic. Your attack power is represented by bravery points; brave attacks steal points from your opponent's pool and add them to yours. The higher your bravery total climbs, the more damage you'll do when landing a standard attack. Battles often begin as a nervous dance as you and your opponent spar, trying to pilfer each other's brave points, and then lead to all-out offensive collisions when one fighter gains enough confidence to move in for a heavy blow.

The battle arenas are large, and most offer the freedom of movement necessary for clashes both on the ground and above it. Each character has different attacks whether they are hovering in the air or their feet are planted on terra firma. The swift speed at which you can dash through the air and your ability to grind on rails that wind through most of the arenas lead to liberating and occasionally breathless fights. The beautiful and bright visuals make clashes look extravagant, and culminate with EX attacks. Such attacks are governed by your EX meter, which can most quickly be filled by obtaining glowing cores that will appear periodically on the battlefield. Once the meter is full, you can activate EX mode; if you land an attack while it's activated, you initiate a stunning and colorful burst attack. This initiates an awesome scene that dramatizes the incredible amount of harm your opponent is sustaining, and it's accompanied by a quick-time event that determines how much damage you will do. In many (but not all) cases, a burst attack provides the battle-ending blow. And what a stirring way to do it.

The visual drama of battles is further elevated by Dissidia's cinematic camera, which valiantly tries to frame the action appropriately and does a good job of it in large exterior arenas. It's not nearly as successful in enclosed spaces, however. Claustrophobic stages like Pandaemonium can be a struggle to navigate, and skirmishes take you into corners and near ceilings, where the camera is simply incapable of showing you exactly what's going on. Certain successful blows may initiate a chase sequence, which is a timing-based tug-of-war in which fighters take turns landing or evading a single attack at a time. In some circumstances, the camera will position itself behind a wall or in some other equally unhelpful position during chases. That's disastrous in a one-on-one fighting game; Dissidia should have stuck with expansive arenas. Lunar Subterrane and Order's Sanctuary, for example, are absolute joys to play in and are unfettered by camera issues.


The story chapters offer a lot of bang for their buck just on their own. You won't find as much variety among characters as you would in a traditional fighting game, but the differences are just substantial enough to inspire you to level up multiple fighters. And because you can earn and equip new attacks, individual fighters evolve over time and thus offer a bit of variety even when you're sticking to a single character. But there's a lot to keep you occupied outside of Story mode. There is Arcade mode, which then splinters into multiple sub-modes in which you take on sequences of opponents. In Duel Colosseum mode, you shuffle through various cards to earn loot and equipment upgrades, and fight enemies. And as you'd expect, you can also fight stand-alone battles against AI opponents and other players.

Dissidia doesn't offer online play, but you can take the fight to others in ad hoc mode, using characters you have leveled and customized or an arcade mode character that puts both players on equal footing. As in any fighting game, playing against a buddy can be both more challenging and more rewarding; Dissidia's AI is respectable, but real players can become more attuned to your play style--and are more likely to get distracted by occasional camera issues than the AI, which is completely unhindered by such quirks. You may encounter small bouts of lag at the very beginning of matches and when initiating burst attacks, but the smoothness necessary for an even fight is there when you need it. And if there's no one nearby to challenge to a battle, you can fight ghosts of your previous opponents, which are AI profiles that attempt to mimic their moves.


Fights provide some of the finest displays of visual energy you'll see on the system. Characters move fluidly throughout the arena, and there's a nice feeling of violent contact when your blade finds its mark. Exaggerated animations and boisterous sound effects make every fight feel as if the weight of the world hangs in the balance. Battle stages look mostly fantastic and are based on famous Final Fantasy locales that may have already carved out a place in your own imagination. The frame rate has no trouble keeping up; gameplay is slick and smooth, and the result is a technically impressive game that's hard not to marvel at. And while the story may not amount to much, prerendered cutscenes are staged well, and the opening cinematic is jaw-dropping in the overdramatic Final Fantasy tradition.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy is a joyful experience that piles on the pleasures, within both its gameplay and its feature set. You earn real-time rewards represented by a Chocobo's journey; you can save battle replays, edit them, and export them as video files; and Moogles send you bizarre messages with points included to spend on more unlockables. In other words, there's a lot of game in here, more than some people will know what to do with. It's disappointing that some of the arenas don't seem to have been created with the cinematic camera in mind and that the story seems more like mediocre fan fiction than it does a true Final Fantasy epic. But if you came just for the fun and the frenzy, Dissidia offers plenty of both, supported by a framework of tangible rewards that deepens the more you play.

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RESISTANCE : RETRIBUTION


The Goods:
  • Intense, fast-paced action  
  • Clever, well-balanced shooting mechanics  
  • Impressive environments and rich visuals  
  • Challenging enemies  
  • Solid suite of online multiplayer modes.
The Bads:
  • Cover can be too sticky  
  • Directional pad actions are a bit awkward  
  • Some spotty voice acting.
 Review of the game:

Resistance: Retribution is the first portable outing for Sony's grim alternate-history franchise. The Resistance series, like many other shooters, has thrived on the dual analog-stick controller of the PlayStation 3, and at first glance the leap to the PSP's single analog stick and face-button control scheme may seem a bit daunting. However, from the first moments of Resistance: Retribution, it is clear that the fast-paced, intense action of the Resistance series is well represented here thanks to clever controls, a powerful arsenal, and vibrant levels. Despite being less epic in scale than its forerunners and having a few rough edges, Resistance: Retribution is a remarkably successful shooter that looks great and is a lot of fun to play.


The key to Retribution's success is the control scheme. You use the analog stick to move, the face buttons to aim, the shoulder buttons to fire, and the D pad for miscellaneous actions. Aiming precisely with four separate buttons is an unwieldy task, so to smooth things out, Retribution features an aim-assist window. This is a bracketed targeting area in the middle of the screen. If you frame your enemies within the brackets, your reticle will automatically target them and you can blast away without having to constantly tweak your aim. You can easily switch between bracketed targets with a tap of the face button, and your reticle will stay locked-on as you strafe back and forth as long as you keep your enemy in the window. It is an elegant and intuitive solution to the aiming problem, and though it may sound like aim assist would make the game too easy, there are a number of factors that keep everything in balance.

The first factor is your relentless enemies. They fill the air with projectiles and advance on you aggressively. Many can be vanquished with a steady stream of aim-assisted bullets, but others require you to look down your sights (temporarily removing aim assist) and shoot them in their big, nasty heads. Some of the larger enemies are much tougher, so you'll need to use your weapon's powerful secondary attack or, better yet, use a bigger weapon. The second factor that keeps the action tense is that these secondary attacks, as well as big guns such as the rocket launcher, do not use the aim assist. This requires that you toggle your zoom (using the slightly awkward D pad up button) and work a bit harder to get your aim right. Fortunately, the large groups of enemies or towering monstrosities that you'll be firing at present a sizable target. There's a great balance to the combat: The aim assist does enough to keep the action going at a good clip, but it doesn't do so much that it takes away the challenge or the fun.

Of course, the action isn't all about aiming and pulling the trigger. Maneuvering around the levels is just as crucial to your survival. If you run up to a low barrier or a protruding wall, you'll slide into cover and (hopefully) out of the range of most Chimeran weapons. Sometimes you can accidentally slide into cover when you don't want to, and then the magnetic pull that was once your savior becomes your bane. Slowed and exposed, you have to quickly pop out if you want to survive. This can be aggravating if you are just shy of a checkpoint, but for the most part Retribution takes the Resistance series into the realm of third-person action successfully. There are even some swimming and mech-piloting sequences that provide an exciting, though generally easier, change of pace.

Retribution also breaks new ground for the Resistance series with its brash protagonist, James Grayson. This British soldier is court-martialed by his countrymen and fights alongside the French for much of the campaign, giving him an excuse to lob obscenities and vulgar epithets at characters of both nationalities. His quips oscillate between cliched and hilarious, but it is nice that, unlike Nathan Hale and the cast of the two previous games, Grayson and the supporting characters from Retribution have actual personalities and motivations. The story, told through competent cutscenes and serviceable (but occasionally spotty) voice acting, focuses as much on their relationships as it does on their struggle against the Chimera. The plot twists are often predictable, and the scope of the characters' struggle feels less epic, but the intriguing conclusion and Grayson's loutish attitude make it a worthwhile chapter in the Resistance saga.


Taking Retribution online lets you fight in battles with up to seven other players through an ad hoc or infrastructure connection. The five game types cover the multiplayer basics: Free-for-All, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Containment (territory control), and Assimilation (one team converts opponents to their side by killing them). These are filled out by a good feature set, including a ranking system, clan support, and chat capability for those with an appropriate headset. Games generally run smoothly and, though there's nothing particularly unique here, Retribution's multiplayer is still rock-solid fun.

What is unique is Retribution's ability to connect to Resistance 2. With both games fired up and both systems connected via USB cable, you can "infect" your PSP. This gives Grayson the glowing eyes and black uniform sported by Nathan Hale in Resistance 2, and endows him with regenerative health and the awesome magnum that shoots exploding rounds. This novelty lasts as long as your PSP is powered on and makes you a bit tougher without significantly changing the difficulty level. The other feature lets you play Retribution with your PS3 controller. This makes playing the game more comfortable, and nixes the aim-assist window in favor of a reticle. Some may prefer this traditional setup, but it's practical only if you have the video-out cables to play your PSP on your TV. Even if you do, Retribution looks so good that it is a shame to blow up the image and stretch it out. The different environments that you travel through are uniquely designed and feature a rich color palette, and the dramatic lighting and smooth animation let the action shine brilliantly.

Allowing the action to shine is what Resistance: Retribution does best. The slick controls perform admirably with only a few minor stumbles, letting you flex your impressive arsenal as you battle through hordes of fiendish enemies. The scope of your journey is a bit narrow, and Grayson may very well offend gamers with ties to France (or England, for that matter), but the excitement and intensity packed into Resistance: Retribution are undeniable.


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LOCO ROCO 2


The Goods:
  • Cute as ever  
  • LocoRocos have some neat new abilities  
  • Great level design  
  • Lots to collect in all levels.
The Bads:
  • Easy boss fights.
 Review of the game:

The first LocoRoco was like an injection of sugar syrup directly to the brain, and its cute design and catchy soundtrack made it a tough game to dislike even if you found faults with its unique but ultimately repetitive gameplay. LocoRoco 2 improves on its predecessor in almost every aspect, with new play mechanics and even more minigames wrapped around the same blob-bouncing interior. It's still a game best played in short bursts, but when you do spend time in the shiny, squishy world that the LocoRocos inhabit, it's hard not to get swept along by its infectious cheeriness.


It's that cheeriness that sets LocoRoco 2 apart. Its colorful style and immensely hummable tunes make it the game equivalent of a baby panda stuffed with kittens. You'd have to have a heart made of stone (or a fringe made of emo) not to fall in love with the round, amorphous blobs of goo that are the LocoRocos as they fight to rid their planet of the evil Mojas, who are back with their king Banmucho after being driven off in the original LocoRoco. Narrative isn't what this game is about, though, given that the story is told in mostly nonsensical cutscenes that only roughly convey what's happening in the plot.

LocoRoco 2 retains all of the key gameplay elements of the original, which in itself is not a bad thing, considering that the game's simple-to-grasp yet tough-to-master gameplay still remains unique among its platforming competitors. You control the LocoRocos as they roll around the surface of the planet, using the shoulder buttons of the PlayStation Portable to tilt the playing field left and right. LocoRocos can be made to bounce by pressing both shoulder buttons at once, which is also their main method of attack against any enemy creatures. As they navigate through the world, LocoRocos "grow" by collecting fruit, which increases the number of units under your control at once. Pressing and holding down the circle button will cause all of your creatures to join together to create one blob, whereas a quick tap of the same button will cause them to separate. Just like in the first game, it's preferable to travel as one blob for most of LocoRoco 2, with breaking up recommended only for getting them through the occasional tight space.

Although rolling and jumping will take up most of your time, the game gives the LocoRocos a few interesting new abilities. For example, your units can now swim through several underwater levels in which you navigate by holding down the circle button to sink and tapping it to rise. Occasionally, you'll also find creatures whose shells the LocoRoco can climb into, allowing them to roll around the environment and smash through obstacles. LocoRocos will also learn new moves as the game progresses, such as the ability to bite onto little tufts of grass to shake out hidden objects and a more powerful jump attack. There are also some minigames thrown into the mix, some of which are more compelling than others. These range from a basic race in which you bet on which LocoRoco will navigate an obstacle course the quickest (this section is completely hands-off) to a whack-a-mole variant in which you use the D pad and four face buttons to hit creatures as they pop up from holes. The best of these is a fun little 2D side-scrolling shooter, which sees you piloting a small MuiMui ship to take on fleet after fleet of enemies.

Music, which has always been an integral if passive part of the LocoRoco experience, actually has a gameplay role in the sequel thanks to a basic rhythm minigame that can be found in most levels. These minigames aren't any more complex than tapping the circle button in time to a simple melody, but it does let you collect the new in-game collectible of musical notes. If you collect enough musical notes in a level, it will give you bonuses, such as items being placed in easier-to-reach locations or even more abilities for your LocoRoco.

All of these additions result in a LocoRoco experience that is more fun than the first game thanks to its increased variety. This is further helped by some great level design. One standout sees you travelling inside a gigantic penguin, with the orientation of the playfield changing as the penguin decides to get up from its horizontal position halfway through the level. Another is set on a series of bouncy platforms that send the LocoRocos flying with every touch. Levels like these--along with the new LocoRoco abilities--means that feeling of repetitiveness isn't as much of an issue in this game as it was in the first one. There's also a fair bit of replay value, particularly if you're mad about collecting. With 20 LocoRocos hidden in each level, as well as hundreds of musical notes, picories (little flies that act as currency to play minigames), items such as stickers, and more, there's the potential to sink plenty of hours into this game to unlock all it has to offer. Nevertheless, there are also some downsides. Boss fights aren't that challenging, with even the end boss offering only a smidgen of resistance. And though you have the opportunity to reclaim LocoRocos that separate from the pack if you collide with stray spikes or hungry Mojas, there's only a small window of opportunity in which to do so, which makes it extremely frustrating to lose them when you're going for the holy grail of a full LocoRoco count at the end of each level.


Of course, frustration never stays too long when you're in this gameworld, and LocoRoco 2's upbeat presentation is sure to constantly wring a smile out of you. The round LocoRocos themselves are as cute as ever, with the supporting cast of creatures such as the hedgehog-like Olmee to the angry little BuiBui all appealing in their own strange and varied ways. The music is another highlight, made up of catchy ditties all sung in a nonsense language that changes in pitch and tone depending on which color of LocoRoco you're currently controlling. Some songs are recycled from the first game, but there are a few new tracks here that are darn near impossible to get out of your head once you've heard them a few times.

Just like its music, LocoRoco 2 does recycle plenty of ideas from the first game, but its new additions are enough to make it an easy game to recommend for any PSP owner. With boundless charm, improved gameplay, and plenty of replayability, LocoRoco 2 is a definite bounce in the right direction for the cheery series.


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KILLZONE : LIBERATION


The Goods:
  • Tightly focused and very satisfying shooting action  
  • great-looking graphics and excellent audio  
  • a full range of ad hoc multiplayer modes, both competitive and cooperative  
  • extremely challenging.
The Bads:
  • Single-player campaign is rather short  
  • no online play included  
  • story is minimal, at best.
 Review of the game:

Though 2004's Killzone for the PlayStation 2 might not be the most fondly remembered of sci-fi first-person shooters, Killzone: Liberation for the PSP is bound to make a more lasting impression. For one thing, Liberation has just about zero to do with its PS2 predecessor from a gameplay perspective. It's still a shooter, but the viewpoint has been switched to an isometric, top-down view and the action itself has improved exponentially. This is a game that provides a great deal of intense shooting action, with tough enemy opponents that don't lie down and die easily. Throw in an ad hoc competitive multiplayer component and co-op play for the whole campaign, and you've got a thoroughly excellent package.


For those uninitiated to the Killzone universe, the series takes place in a futuristic society where humanity has taken to the stars. A militant subset splinters off from society to form its own government on a planet called Helghan. However, over time, this planet turns these people into something other than human--a race known as the Helghast. In Killzone, you were neck deep in the battle between the Helghast and the human race, fending off a Helghast invasion on a planet called Vetka. In Liberation, you're going in the opposite direction. Picking up where the first game left off, you're once again playing as the human soldier Templar. Now on the offensive, the human army is going after the Helghast, and you'll take on a series of missions, as Templar, to bring down the enemy. In truth, there's not much story progression for the Killzone universe to be found here. The game spends a small amount of time setting up the objective for each mission, and there's a basic plot involving a pesky Helghast general named Metrac and some key members of the human political and military system getting kidnapped. However, for the most part, the focus is very much on the action in Liberation, and not on the storytelling.

Were the action not so good, that'd be a real problem. Thankfully, you'll probably be too neck deep in fending off hordes of Helghast soldiers to care why you're doing it. Though at first glance Liberation looks like a Killzone-themed dungeon crawler, it's very much a shooter, and a challenging one at that. You begin each level with a specific gun--you start out with a weak assault rifle, and as you play through the game, you'll unlock more powerful starting guns--and a basic mission objective or two. Along the way, the Helghast will come at you in all forms, from groupings of grunt soldiers to rocket-launcher-wielding baddies to massive tanks. Killing them is challenging for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they're very smart. Though you'll see occasional bad guys stand around in a stupid spot, just waiting to get shot, most of the time enemies will find cover the moment you start firing at them. They'll duck, they'll dodge, they'll launch grenades at you to try and flush you out from cover, and they'll even shoot an exploding barrel if you happen to be standing next to one.

Suffice it to say, the Helghast are very good at finding ways to kill you, so you have to be a good shot, as well as mindful of the environment. This is not a run-and-gun shooter. You have to be methodical in your movements, keeping an eye to cover points, knowing when and where to throw grenades, and basically just not walking into firefights with guns blazing.

The shooting mechanics are handled very well in Liberation. There's no specific autoaim function, but when you point your gun in the direction of an enemy, your character will lock on to that enemy. This mechanic works no matter where an enemy is standing, so if enemies are above you, you'll point up, and if they're below, you'll point there, too. Little touches like rocket launchers and tank cannons knowing where to lock their fire make aiming remarkably easier, as well.


That's not to say that the game can't be a bit frustrating at times. Maybe that's an understatement. Though it isn't cheap or broken, few games on the PSP will induce the same level of rage that Liberation's single-player campaign will. Because you need to figure out the environment to survive a fight, you'll be dealing with a great deal of trial and error. You will die in this game...a lot. On the plus side, the campaign has a great checkpoint system that rarely forces you to replay too terribly much of one section of a mission. Of course, that will be small comfort to those who find themselves getting decimated by scads of Helghast troops on a regular basis.


Another interesting wrinkle to the gameplay system is your ability to command non-player characters. Though you won't be accompanied by a computer-controlled ally on every mission, there are several sections where you'll have someone working alongside you, and in most cases, that's an allied soldier named Rico. By pressing up on the PSP's directional pad, you'll pull up a command menu that shows you exactly what you can make an ally do at that point. In most situations, you can simply command them to take a specific firing position, but you can also order them to, for example, attack specific enemies and plant explosives in key spots. The artificial intelligence does a great job of following orders, and you'll almost never have to give an order twice to get them to do what you want. In fact, the worst complaint you can say about the allied AI is that they have the ability to shoot you if you get in the way, and vice versa--and that will happen every now and again.

As thrilling as the shooting can be, and as much depth and variety as there is to the action, the gameplay has one notable flaw. Specifically, the core mission designs simply aren't up to par with everything else. It's not that they're bad, so much as they are very linear and generic. It's a lot of get from point A to point B scenarios, basic escort missions, and gameplay of that ilk. The basic level designs are good, but it's usually overly clear where you need to go at all times, to the point where exploration is largely unnecessary. The only times you might be confused are when you mistake a section of the scenery for an obstacle, when it's actually the path to the next area.



All told, the single-player campaign is very enjoyable, though also rather short and devoid of a decent conclusion. If you're good, you can get all the way through in about four hours (though in real time, it'll probably be more like twice that with the amount of postdeath restarts you'll have to do). But the campaign is good enough to play through multiple times, especially if you've got a friend nearby to play it with you. Every time you complete a mission in the single-player, that mission unlocks for the cooperative mode. Co-op play isn't too terribly different from the single-player experience. The game doesn't try to ramp up the difficulty by throwing more enemies at you, though it also doesn't give you more ammo pickups, meaning you'll have to be more careful not to waste it. Still, everything's more fun with a friend, and being able to go through the whole campaign cooperatively is a nice bonus.

Additional modes include a single-player challenge mode, as well as competitive ad hoc multiplayer. The challenge mode unlocks a series of challenges each time you complete one of the campaign's chapters. Objectives such as basic target shooting and timed demolition missions are the norm here. These are decently fun on their own, but by completing and scoring high on these missions, you can earn points that go toward character upgrades in the campaign. During the initial screen where you pick your weapons, you can choose up to three of the unlocked upgrades to take into battle with you. Increased health, additional grenade slots, and unlimited ammo bonuses are just some of the available options. What's especially cool about this is that different missions require different abilities, so being able to change up which upgrades you use from mission to mission is extremely helpful.

The competitive multiplayer should be the best aspect about this game, but it's unfortunately limited at the moment. There are four play types: deathmatch, team deathmatch, assault, and capture the flag. For anyone who has been playing multiplayer shooters over the last decade or so, these modes should be pretty straightforward. Functionally, the action is identical in multiplayer as it is in single-player, with the same weapons, same targeting functions, and same strategies. It's designed for up to six players to play at once, and you'll pretty much need as many people as possible to make the game fun. Playing multiplayer with just one or two people isn't that exciting, since the maps are a little too large for such a small number of players. However, what's really unfortunate about the multiplayer is that it isn't online. The game only supports ad hoc play, and the game-sharing option doesn't offer more than a couple of single-player demos. There is a download option that will allow you to get new content for the game, though the specifics and availability of that content haven't been announced. According to the game's developer, there will be more maps to go along with the six included with the game, as well as a downloadable patch that will add infrastructure multiplayer to the game.


Liberation's presentation might not look like much at first, with its zoomed-out camera view and seemingly drab setting, but as you get into the action, it warms up on you very quickly. The character models and animations are top-notch. The simple act of watching characters run around and shoot is pleasing enough, but watching them fly through the air after getting blown away by a big explosion is immensely entertaining. The game uses rag-doll physics with good effect. Occasionally, you'll see bodies clip through areas they shouldn't, but this is one of those rare cases where the rag doll looks less ridiculous and more realistic. All throughout the game, the frame rate holds up, too. Particularly huge explosions tend to make it drop a bit, but generally, the game runs totally smooth.

The game's audio is also very impressive. The soundtrack consists of the typical military march score that you'd expect, and it's actually a bit repetitive, but the sound effects are fantastic compared to what you normally find on the PSP. Guns sound great, and explosions sound even better. There's also some solid voice work from the supporting players. Mostly it's just Helghast soldiers screaming orders at each other, or just screaming due to imminent death, but the dialogue from your human cohorts is very good, as well. The only one that's a bit off is Rico. Seriously, how many times can you shout, "Eat lead, a******!" before the words lose all meaning?

While the single-player campaign is ultimately too short and devoid of story, and the multiplayer suffers from the lack of infrastructure play, Killzone: Liberation is still an excellent and engaging shooter. Its tightly woven shooting mechanics and tough enemy opponents create some of the most intense battles you'll find in any game on the PSP, and its great presentation and duo of multiplayer modes give it plenty of longevity. Some people might be put off by the difficulty and the brevity of the game, but most will find a thoroughly unique and enjoyable experience in Killzone: Liberation.

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PATAPON 3

The Goods:
  • Delightful audio and visual presentation  
  • Lengthy and varied campaign  
  • More than 20 different playable Patapons  
  • Loot, loot, and more loot  
  • Impressive multiplayer options.
The Bads:  
  • Pause option not available from outset  
  • You can use gear rather than strategy to beat many levels  
  • Leveling characters outside of your core team can be a chore.
Review of the game:

If you're familiar with previous Patapon games, it might come as some surprise to you that in Patapon 3 you don't get to command an army. You're still a deity worshipped by the titular tribe, and you still get to issue the little guys orders by rhythmically tapping on sacred drums mapped to the PSP's face buttons, but the army has been turned to stone, so you have far fewer units at your disposal. All is not lost, though; not only have you been summoned into the body of a reincarnated hero, but there's so much emphasis on loot and leveling this time around that your small band grows more powerful practically every time you play. They can get so powerful, in fact, that where previous games have generally required careful strategizing to succeed, here it's often possible to forgo defensive and evasive moves in favor of an all-out offense. Still, there's plenty of challenge to be found in the colorful combat zones of Patapon 3, and even as you're decimated by a dragon or digested by a demon it's hard not to be won over by the game's quirky presentation and succumb to its just-one-more-try gameplay.


After picking one of three Patapon heroes to play as (would you prefer a bow, a spear, or a sword and shield combo?), four training missions do a good job of familiarizing you with most of the commands in your repertoire. There are only seven initially, including "onward," "attack," "defend," and the like. Each command is issued by hitting a different sequence of four drum beats in time with the music; you press circle, circle, square, circle to attack, for example. Those four beats compose one musical measure, and after you enter them it takes another measure for the Patapons to carry out your order. It's an unusual and satisfying way to command your forces as they march across the screen, and it's made less intimidating for newcomers by both a list of the correct inputs at the bottom of the screen and a flashing border that makes it easier to keep in time. String together a number of well-timed orders, and your units go into a fever that makes them significantly more powerful. Hit an unrecognized sequence of drums or miss the beat completely, and your troops just stand around looking confused. Patapon 3 is less punishing than its predecessors where the timing of your drum beats is concerned, but it also rewards you for perfectly timed beats by having them trigger your hero units' powerful special moves.

Although your chosen hero is accompanied on all missions by three other combat units, heroes are so powerful that it often feels like the other guys are just marching in the wake of your one-man army. This is certainly true early in your adventure, but as you unlock additional unit types and they gain access to more abilities and equipment, you definitely can't afford to ignore them. There are 21 unit types in Patapon 3, plus hero variants of all of them, and while it's possible to stick with the same team for extended periods of time, you inevitably encounter challenges that require a different approach. You might choose to replace a healer with an archer for a mission in which you're not taking a lot of damage, or replace all of your ranged units because their projectiles are falling short in an oncoming wind, for example. It's fun to experiment with different formations, and because leveling up units that you don't use regularly unlocks abilities that are shared with those you do (you can even change the direction of that wind), you handicap yourself if you stubbornly stick with your favorites. Unfortunately, leveling up units that you don't use regularly can be a chore if you leave it until late in the game to try to catch them up. Yes, you can give them high-level equipment, group them with your most powerful hero, and run them through missions that would normally be beyond them, but they still don't gain levels quickly.


The occasional need to grind unit levels is at least acknowledged; missions that incorporate story events can't be replayed once you've beaten them, but typically upon beating said missions, you unlock one or two more in the same locale that can be replayed as much as you like. These missions even have descriptions that let you know whether they're particularly well suited for leveling or for collecting currency and crafting materials for use at the gear-upgrading blacksmith. Playing through most levels you also collect treasure chests that are dropped or even thrown at you by large enemies. You get to open treasure chests only upon completion of a level, but their coloring and a numeric value at least give you some indication of how good your loot is going to be when you pick them up. That's good to know when you're fighting your way through one of the new three- or five-floor dungeons, because at the end of each floor you have the option to either retreat to your hideout with your loot and start the dungeon over or proceed and risk losing it. Any loot that you don't think is worth keeping can be dismantled at your armory to gain more crafting materials and currency, though you shouldn't rush to get rid of any weapons and armor just because they're not immediately useful. Weaker items in your inventory might occasionally be needed for specific levels because they offer a resistance to or are highly likely to cause effects like burn, sleep, freeze, and poison.

It would be an exaggeration to say that you end up spending as much time gearing up for missions as you do playing them, but at times it feels pretty close. You can automatically optimize all of your units by putting them in the best gear available at the push of a button, but this option doesn't take your next mission into account and so isn't always as useful as it could be. Furthermore, there's no way to optimize only a single unit, which might have been a useful addition. So, if you've just completed a mission that pitted you against fire-breathing dragon puppies and you're headed into one where the weather alone is enough to freeze ill-prepared Patapons, you really have little choice but to manually swap out your ice armor for flame armor. In addition to weather conditions and potentially fatal status effects, it behooves you to consider your offensive options. Weapons that are effective against demons and dragons aren't necessarily the same weapons that are good for bringing down golems and enemy towers. Patapon 3 throws an interesting assortment of enemies your way, many of which are recognizable from previous games, albeit with new attack patterns. Bosses and their larger minions pose some varied challenges, and though most of them clearly broadcast their lethal intentions a measure or two ahead of time, they become less predictable as their health bars shrink.


Additional variety comes courtesy of versus missions that, once encountered in your adventure, can be played online competitively. Not all of these are great, but the race and tower defense game types are a lot of fun. In obstacle races, two opposing forces of up to four player heroes start alongside each other and must race from left to right to the finish line while contending with all manner of enemies and obstructions. Obstacles that are colored either red or blue can be destroyed only by the team of the opposite color, while other obstructions and enemies are there for whoever wants them. This not only ensures that it's difficult for one team to pull massively ahead of another, but also introduces some strategy to the proceedings because it can be preferable to hang back and let your opponent deal with a particularly tough enemy. In tower defense battles, enemies start at opposite ends of the map and march toward the middle where, after capturing a number of cannon emplacements en route, they fight for control of the one in the middle and ultimately try to reach each other's base. Like the races, tower defense games work well because pushing forward as quickly as possible isn't always the best option; when you move into enemy territory, you leave your own cannons behind and might fall foul of your enemies' even though you're winning where territory is concerned.

Where Patapon 2 offered just one ad hoc multiplayer mode, Patapon 3 boasts an impressive suite of multiplayer options that are playable both locally and online. In addition to the aforementioned versus battles, you can play through almost any mission cooperatively, enter special multiplayer dungeons that you're locked out of when playing solo, and team up to take down rare and powerful world bosses who show up randomly between missions as you progress. (You don't need teammates to take down the world bosses, but they can make the battles a lot easier.) Furthermore, you can visit the hideouts of other players and make use of their vendors and blacksmiths, who might offer and specialize in items different from your own. There's also a clan system in place, though that's something of a misnomer given that forming your own clan is mandatory before you can play online. It's really just a fancy friends list with a system in place for rewarding you when you interact and team up with other clan members. Regardless, it serves its purpose and can make finding people to play with much easier if the regular options to search by game types and hero levels relative to your own aren't yielding any results.


Whether you're playing solo or with friends, Patapon 3 delights at every opportunity. The upbeat soundtrack offers plenty of variations on the same theme for you to keep time with; the stylized characters are wonderfully animated; and rare weapons are so gloriously over-the-top that they make those favored by Final Fantasy protagonists look like toothpicks. You have ample opportunity to enjoy all of these neat touches as well, despite the fact that maintaining your rhythm and always thinking one or two measures ahead requires a high level of concentration. Incidentally, and incredibly, Patapon 3 is the first game in the series to offer a "pause" option, though it's not available from the outset. Before you can pause the game using a special drum sequence (so as not to break your rhythm when you come back to the game), you first need to retrieve an item from the very first training mission. You could be forgiven for thinking that this isn't a problem, but you need to string together a near-perfect sequence of "advance" and "attack" orders to reach said item, and even returning to the mission once you've leveled up your group doesn't make it a cakewalk. The ability to pause your game mid-mission is a welcome addition, but it's one that you shouldn't have to work nearly so hard for.
Patapon 3 is a great game that, depending on your play style and whether or not you're enlisting the help of other heroes, could easily take you 40 or more hours to complete. And once you're finished, there's a good chance that you'll want to keep on playing in order to level up the rest of your Patapons (42 total) and get them geared up in preparation for multiplayer sessions. You might lament the heightened focus on gear, leveling, and squad selection if you're a fan of previous games, but that shouldn't deter you from spending $20 on a game that delivers dozens of hours of great gameplay.

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PATAPON

The Goods:
  • Superb art design  
  • Innovative rhythm-based real-time strategy gameplay  
  • Some varied and memorable level designs  
  • Plenty of loot to collect for your army  
  • Excellent value for money.
The Bads:  
  • No multiplayer support  
  • Replaying hunt levels gets old after a while.
Review of the game:

Like Puzzle Quest before it, Patapon is a game that grabs key features from existing genres, squishes them together like different-colored balls of Play-Doh, and then turns them into something far more special than you might expect. For example, if you combined a ball of red and ball of blue you might expect to get a big lump of purple, while a rainbow-colored re-creation of the Venus de Milo would seem unlikely. But Patapon is just that special. Puzzle Quest's nontoxic, nonstaining ingredients included a Bejeweled-style puzzle component used for combat, as well as a character advancement system and storyline that belonged in a role-playing game. Patapon's recipe, on the other hand, blends rhythm-based controls with a horizontally scrolling real-time strategy game. Then--as if that combo wasn't already enticing enough--it sprinkles plenty of RPG-style gear collection and some fabulous visuals from French artist Rolito on top. In short, Patapon is unlike any game that has come before it, and with a retail price that's half of what many PSP games sell for, our recommendation of this ingenious recipe that has been masterfully realized is a no-brainer.


Developed by Interlink, the same studio responsible for 2006's LocoRoco, Patapon casts you in the role of a deity who is worshipped by the titular tribe. The Patapon have fallen on hard times since being forced from their homeland by the evil Zigaton army, and you're their best shot at ever reclaiming it. Since you've showed up in their hour of need, you've also been tasked with leading the tribe to a mysterious place called Earthend so that they might gaze upon a sacred object known simply as "IT." The Patapon are a tribe of adept warriors, but they're clueless without someone to lead them and won't do anything without first being told to by The Almighty. That's you.

You interact with the tribe using a set of four battle drums, which are mapped to the PSP's face buttons. Orders must be given to the tribe in time with a beat that's constant throughout every mission using different sequences of four drum notes. Simple orders, such as "advance" and "attack," are enough to get you through the early levels. But you'll learn others, such as "charge," "defend," and "retreat" as you progress through the game. Furthermore, you'll learn to use your godlike powers to perform four different weather-changing miracles that can be used to give your archers' arrows a tailwind or to unsettle a boss with an earthquake among other things.

Archers, which are known as "Yumipon" in-game, are one of six different unit types that you'll be adding to your army's ranks as you battle your way toward Earthend. The others, which also have different names that will mean nothing to you, are essentially foot soldiers, spearmen, cavalry, musicians (whose tubalike instruments launch deadly projectiles), and heavies armed with oversized maces or hammers. You can only take three different unit types with you on each mission, and you can use a maximum of either three or six of each of them depending on their size. Inevitably, you'll have favorites, but choosing the correct units for a given level is every bit as important as giving them the right orders once a mission is underway.

The 30-plus missions offer plenty of variety and come in three distinct flavors: hunts, battles, and bosses. Hunting levels are a way for you to gather resources from the occasionally bizarre and mostly harmless indigenous creatures of the Patapon's world. Battles against the Zigaton army are objective-based (rescuing a captured Patapon or escorting a catapult to and then destroying a Zigaton base, for example). Because you get to pick up any weapons dropped by fallen enemies, battles are also a great way to improve your army without spending resources. Boss encounters are the most challenging missions the first time you play them because you need to figure out and memorize the bosses' attack patterns before you really stand a chance of issuing the right orders to your forces in a timely fashion. Bosses modeled after dinosaurs, giant crabs, sandworms, and carnivorous plants make up much of the roster, but even those with similar appearances offer quite different challenges. Furthermore, after beating a boss you have the option to go back to face it over and over again. And it gets tougher each time you do.


Replaying boss levels is fun for a while, and the number of times you can beat a boss is a pretty good measure for the strength of your army. Hunting levels can also be replayed as many times as you like, though they don't get any more difficult and offer no challenge whatsoever after a while. This is unfortunate because hunting levels are the only quick way to earn the ka-ching (Patapon's life-giving currency) necessary to create new units for your army. But replaying them over and over again--which you'll have to do at times--gets old pretty fast. Battle levels are the only ones that can't be replayed, which is also unfortunate because they're the most enjoyable missions of all and you'll rarely get new weapons for your army any other way.

When you're not leading your Patapon army on a mission, there are a number of things to keep you occupied back at the tribe's home base. A handful of rhythm-based minigames that are unlocked during missions can be played here to earn extra resources and, in one case, to prepare attribute-boosting food for your army. There's also a life-giving tree of sorts where you can plant resources, such as meat, rocks, and alloys to birth new warriors for your ranks. The quality and rarity of the materials that you use here will have an impact on the appearance and attributes of the warrior that's created, but you'll also need a lot more ka-ching to make it happen. Regular Patapon units are black and white; to paraphrase an insult from a Zigaton enemy, they look a lot like eyeballs with limbs. When you create stronger, faster, or fire-resistant units (to list a few examples of what's possible), the eyeballs change color to blue, orange, or green and occasionally sport some quite unusual headgear that prevents them from wearing any helmets you pick up from fallen Zigatons.

As is the case in many role-playing games, collecting armor and weapons is one of the more compelling features of Patapon. Your army of eyeballs will look mighty impressive by the time you reach the end of the game. Because the game's loot selection is so large and varied, it's also unlikely it will look the same as anyone else's. Some of the more ornate helmets dropped by mini-bosses are guaranteed to end up in your armory at some point, but there are plenty of swords, spears, shields, axes, maces, bows, and other weapons that you might never see even if you played through the entire game two or three times. Incidentally, it took us a little more than 13 hours to play through Patapon the first time, though we admittedly spent a lot of time experimenting with weather miracles and the like to uncover secrets. We also made a point of beating all of the bosses several times over simply because we enjoyed doing so. You're free to continue playing even after you've beaten the final boss, by the way, which would be great, except that there's very little motivation to do so. Yes, the game is still fun and the bosses continue to get more challenging. But what Patapon really lacks is some way for you to show off your army, its gear, and its achievements to other players on a leaderboard or in a multiplayer mode.


Patapon is a strategy game with some great boss encounters, as well as plenty of different weapons and armor pieces to collect. But first and foremost, it's still a rhythm game. If you can't keep a beat, you'll struggle to string together combos of orders, which will result in your army standing around hopelessly anytime it is unsure about what to do. Fortunately, the game's lighthearted soundtrack (not to mention a pulsating border around the screen) is helpful in this regard, and once you settle into a rhythm, your army will even start to sing along. Patapon's audio design, like that in LocoRoco, is something that you're either going to love or hate, but even those of you in the latter camp are sure to raise a smile at times. For example, there's a baby mountain that lets out a cute chuckle when you play music on its toes in one of the minigames, and in some of the later levels, the music you've come to rely on for rhythm guidance seems purposefully composed to confuse you, which is a neat touch.

There's never been a game quite like Patapon before. Its combination of light real-time strategy and rhythm is as superb as it is surprising. Anyone with access to a PSP would do well to check it out.

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SID MEIER'S PIRATES!

The Goods:
  • Charming, addictive, and fast-paced gameplay that draws you in and doesn't let go  
  • open-ended strategy that lets you live the life of a pirate  
  • extremely PSP-friendly, from the easy-to-learn controls to the minimal loading times.
The Bads:  
  • Sound and music are noticeably absent at times in the game.
Review of the game:

After triumphantly making the rounds on the PC and the Xbox over the past couple of years, Sid Meier's Pirates! has finally arrived on the PlayStation Portable. It is quite possibly a perfect fit for the platform because the minigame nature of the gameplay is well suited for the PSP and because it is an addictive strategy game that captures all of the charm of being a pirate, but without any of the pesky downsides, such as scurvy.


The PSP version is a fairly faithful translation of 2004's hit PC game (which itself was a remake of the classic 1987 original). In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you play as a pirate out for revenge against the evil Spanish nobleman who wronged your family. But the beauty of Sid Meier's Pirates! is that this open-ended strategy game lets you live the glorious life of a swashbuckler your own way. You can pursue the career of a privateer, a treasure hunter, an explorer, or a trader. More often than not, you'll dabble in all those fields at the same time. You'll sail the Spanish Main, trade broadsides with other ships, engage in dashing swordfights, search for buried treasure, sneak into hostile towns, and dance with many a governor's daughter along the way. Your character will age over time, so your ultimate goal is to amass as much fame and fortune as possible before you retire. At that point, your pirate will go into the hall of fame, and you can start all over again.

The game's prologue explains how your wealthy merchant family was imprisoned and how you escaped as a young boy. Now, years later, it's up to you to save your family, vanquish the evildoers, and get rich along the way. The first thing you'll do is choose a name for yourself, as well as a specialty, such as swordfighting (which is useful in duels), navigation (which makes you sail a bit faster), or wit and charm (which help your dancing skills). You also select a nation to align yourself with, which determines the ports that are friendly to you, as well as a time period, which affects the starting balance of power in the Caribbean. After that, you'll begin aboard your tiny ship in a great big sea that's alive with commerce and activity.

Your first stop will be in port, where you can pick up a letter of marquee from the local governor, which basically gives you the right to sink any ship not flying that nation's flag. You can also swing by the tavern to get the latest gossip (which can reveal useful info, such as the sailing of a treasure ship), purchase a useful item from the mysterious guy in the corner, or hire a bunch of scurvy knaves for your crew. After you check in with the shipwright, who patches up any damage and upgrades various components of your ship, you'll visit the local merchant, where you can provision your ship and purchase or sell trade goods.


What makes Sid Meier's Pirates! so compelling is its exquisite pace. There's just so much for you to do when you're sailing around the Caribbean. You're never too far from accomplishing some kind of goal, whether it's finding the final part of an important treasure map or chasing down some dastardly nobleman who wronged your family. This pacing makes it easy to get drawn into the game and even harder to stop playing it. At the heart of the game is the sense that it's essentially a series of enjoyable, fast-paced minigames stitched together. In the span of half an hour, you can easily wage several ship battles, dance with numerous governors' daughters, sneak into an enemy port, and dig up a stash of buried treasure.

The PSP version turns out to be much more faithful to the excellent PC game than the 2005 Xbox version because the game seems so natural and effortless on the PSP. The action translates well to the PSP's wide screen, and the controls make it remarkably easy to pick up and play. More importantly, the PSP version isn't plagued with the tedious loading times of the Xbox version. Sailing in and out of port is instantaneous, as is accessing most in-town options, such as the shipwright and tavern. You'll encounter load times only when talking to the governor, dueling, dancing, or hunting for treasure, and even then, the load times are reasonable.
When your ship engages in battle, the game zooms in on your immediate patch of ocean (including any nearby landmasses, rocks, and shoals). You have to maneuver into position and then fire broadsides at the enemy. These battles last only a couple of minutes at the most, but there's a great deal of tactical depth to them, particularly at the harder difficulty levels. Not only is the enemy more cunning at harder levels, but you must also factor in the constantly shifting wind, which affects your ship's maneuverability. And to capture a ship, you must use different ammunition, including medium-range chainshot to destroy sails and rigging and short-range grapeshot to whittle down the opposing ship's crew. That last one is the most important because if you try to board a ship, there's a chance you'll have to fight its captain in a duel, triggering the swordfighting minigame. If you defeat the captain, you can capture the ship and sail it into the nearest port, where you can sell it and its cargo for a profit and then pay a visit to the governor for your reward. You may also have the opportunity to dance with his daughter. And if you charm her, she may reward you with a valuable piece of information. You'll then go out to sea to repeat the cycle all over again.

When you need to infiltrate a hostile port, you'll encounter the sneaking minigame, which is sort of Pac-Man in reverse. Your goal is to skulk around the mazelike streets of a town, avoiding the town watch. If captured, you'll be thrown into jail, where you'll rot for a few months before they let you go. At the easier difficultly levels, dodging the guards is incredibly easy, but at the harder levels, it's a lot tougher. Thankfully, you have a few moves at your disposal, such as the ability to scale walls, knock out guards from behind, and duck behind bales of hay to hide. The suspense can be high at times, especially when you narrowly weave between several guards.

Then there are the turn-based land battles that occur when you try to raid an enemy port or face off against the main bad guy at the end of the rescue-your-family storyline. In these, you have three kinds of units at your command: officers, sailors, and buccaneers. Officers and sailors are melee units, while buccaneers are armed with muskets. In battles, you have to maneuver your units to take advantage of the terrain and try to destroy or demoralize the enemy. You can flank enemies or use the jungle as cover. If you win the battle, not only will you plunder the town, but you'll also have the ability to switch its allegiance, thus earning you points with a particular faction.


The Caribbean of Sid Meier's Pirates! is a colorful place, and the game approaches the subject matter with a light touch. The pirates are charming rogues who like to sing drinking songs, the stuffy army officers are bombastic buffoons, and the ladies are all lovely. In other words, these are the sorts of characters who would feel at home in an Errol Flynn movie or Pirates of the Caribbean. Visually, the PSP version seems a bit spartan because the art style is minimal to keep the frame rate smooth, but the game still feels warm and inviting. The audio effects stumble a bit in the PSP version; you'll certainly notice when music and sound are absent during large stretches of the game.

The single-player game is so compelling that it'll engross you for days at a time, but there's not much to be said for multiplayer. The PSP version features multiplayer battle support for up to four. This simply pits your sailing skills against others as you maneuver and fight in a handful of arena levels. Nevertheless, this is still a completely engrossing strategy game that will easily consume countless hours. And it's certainly a game that deserves to be in every PSP library.

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GOD OF WAR : CHAIN OF OLYMPUS

The Goods:
  • Outstanding technical and artistic visuals  
  • Combat is intense and gory  
  • Soundtrack fits the game perfectly.
The Bads:  
  • Very, very little in the way of new gameplay elements  
  • Can easily be beaten in less than seven hours  
  • Could have used more puzzles, platforming segments, and bosses.
Review of the game:

Ever since its existence was first hinted at on the back of God of War II's game manual, God of War: Chains of Olympus has been one of the most anticipated games for the PlayStation Portable. Now that the wait is finally over, the question is: Does it deliver? The answer is "yes" almost across the board. The combat, level design, gore, sex, and mythology are all here--albeit in slightly stripped-down form.


God of War: Chains of Olympus' story takes place before the first God of War game on the PlayStation 2, which is a little confusing because you find yourself trying to remember just what had and hadn't happened in Kratos' twisted life at the time of the first game. At this particular point in the God of War timeline, Kratos is a general whose sole purpose is to serve the gods of Olympus. During the course of Chains of Olympus, the gods' orders create a certain moral dilemma for Kratos, and he finds himself faced with the decision of whether or not to do the bidding of his gods or do what is best for him. The story doesn't play a prominent role here, but this is God of War, so all you really need to know is why Kratos is pissed off so you can go off and slaughter mythical creatures with reckless abandon.

With few exceptions, the combat in Chains of Olympus is just as you've come to know and love. The controls are tight and in general quite good. Learning to evade attacks requires a bit of an adjustment, given that you need to hold both of the shoulder buttons and then move the analog stick, but you get used to it and it works fine. Kratos can make light and heavy attacks using his blades of chaos, and you can perform combos by pressing specific, simple button patterns. Eventually you'll get your hands on a second weapon, the Gauntlet of Zeus, which is essentially a giant glove that Kratos can use to pummel his foes. It's a great addition to Kratos' armament and a ton of fun to use. It's just too bad that it's the only alternate weapon in the game. Magic is a bit limited as well, but you'll eventually acquire a few other abilities. Most useful to us was the first one you get, the efreet, which damaged all nearby enemies; the other abilities were of little use. For every successful kill, you're rewarded with red orbs that can be used to learn new attacks as well as upgrade weapons and magic. Once again you can find hidden treasure chests that contain red orbs, as well as others that offer gorgon eyes and phoenix feathers. If you collect enough of them, you can increase your overall health and magic meters. Treasure chests and red orbs are actually quite easy to come by, so you should have no problem maxing out all of Kratos' abilities before the end of the game.

As soon as the opening cutscene ends, you're thrown right into the middle of an epic battle in which you must defend Attica from the Persian Army and a basilisk, a huge, reptilian beast that the Persian forces unleashed on the city. During the course of the game you'll fight your way through Attica, some enormous caves, and eventually Hades. Each level is linear, though there are a few branching paths that can be explored to find bonus items. Chains of Olympus is much more combat-oriented than God of War II. You sometimes have to manipulate statues and other items to reflect light or activate a pressure switch to open doors, and you'll find yourself doing a bit of platforming and swimming, but most often you're on good old terra firma while battling foot soldiers, sirens, medusas, cyclopes, and other mythical creatures so that you can open a door or break through a magical barrier to get to the next area. The heavier focus on action certainly keeps things moving, and the combat is as awesome as ever, but the occasional bit of puzzle-solving and high-wire acrobatics is missed here.

Of course, there are several extras available once you finish the game. You'll unlock concept art along with one bonus costume and video by finishing the game on the default difficulty. You can also go back and play through on the ultrahard god mode or try to complete the five tasks in the challenge of Hades, each of which quickly reveals the reason behind its name.


Chains of Olympus delivers almost everything you'd want from a God of War game on the PSP. It's reasonable to expect a few concessions when a series transitions from a console to a handheld, Chains of Olympus does make a few that are worth noting. The biggest issue the game has is that it does almost nothing new. Even the played-out sex minigame is back for another tryst. Granted, it's the same formula fans of the series have come to know and love, but it would have been nice for at least a few new gameplay ideas to be introduced. Instead, the game goes the other way and actually feels a little stripped-down in parts; there are fewer weapons, levels, and boss fights, though there are still plenty of quick button-pressing minigames--perhaps a few too many.

It's also rather short. As far as we can tell, we collected all but one of the hidden chests and still saw the ending credits in less than seven hours. You're left wanting more because the game is a blast, but it's still over far too quickly. One thing the developer didn't compromise is load times. Most areas stream instantaneously, and there are probably less than 60 seconds out of the entire game in which you're waiting for the next area to load.

Few PSP games can match Chains of Olympus from a visual standpoint, either technically or artistically. Simply maintaining a solid frame rate is impressive enough when you've got so many characters fighting onscreen at the same time, but when you toss in lighting and particle effects, moving backgrounds, and lots of blood, it's even more impressive. The cutscenes alternate between prerendered full-motion video, in-game engine, and concept art brought to life by a bit of animation and camera movement. All three types look fantastic. The levels are varied and expansive, but they don't quite have the same epic feel as in the previous games. This is partially because the first level is the only one that has a lot of action going on in the distance, but also because the PSP's screen is small. Likewise, Kratos is sometimes quite tiny and doesn't look particularly powerful when he's only two millimeters tall. Kratos doesn't always appear that small, though, and his movements and attacks are always nicely animated regardless of his stature. If you own a PSP slim and the proper cables, you can make the size issue irrelevant (as well as improve the brightness, which is often really dark) by playing on your television. The textures, which look just fine on the PSP, don't quite hold up on the big screen, but the rest of the game looks fantastic even when blown up several times on your TV.

Headphones are a must when playing Chains of Olympus; it sounds fantastic. T.C. Carson and Linda Hunt reprise their roles as Kratos and the narrator, respectively, and they once again deliver top-notch performances. The well-known God of War theme is also back, and the whole soundtrack fits the action perfectly. After all, it's hard not to feel like a total stud with timpani and horns bombastically urging you on.


Like Grand Theft Auto and Syphon Filter before it, God of War successfully pulls off a console experience on a handheld. Some new ideas and a better mixture of puzzles, platforming, and bosses would have been divine, but Chains of Olympus is an excellent game that delivers most of what you've been praying for--more God of War.

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NARUTO SHIPPUDEN : ULTIMATE NINJA HEROES 3

The Goods:
  • Beautiful visuals, including some spectacular attack animations  
  • Tons of unlockable characters, artwork, music, and other goodies.
The Bads:  
  • Combat is shallow and unsatisfying  
  • Side-scrolling levels are dull and control poorly  
  • Uninspired storytelling makes no effort to pull in those unfamiliar with Naruto.
Review of the game:

A game like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 has to do two things to be a success. It has to deliver on the Naruto name by providing content that will appeal to fans of the popular anime series, and it has to make fighting as the titular blond ninja and his friends or foes enjoyable. Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 pays out in spades on the first point but fails to deliver on the second. As a result, it ends up feeling like fan-service halfheartedly disguised as a video game.


The meat of the game is in a mode called the Master Road, which picks up with Naruto returning to Hidden Leaf Village after an absence of two-and-a-half years. He barely has time to fight a few sparring matches before his friend Gaara is kidnapped by the evil Akatsuki organization. The story of the subsequent rescue attempt and what follows is spread out across the seven chapters that make up the Master Road. This will all be familiar territory for Naruto fans, but the story is told so incoherently and throws so many characters and clan names at you that players unacquainted with the source material will be lost. The occasional dramatic animation sequence livens things up, but the overwhelming majority of conversations take place between static character portraits that oddly stand side by side and stare out at you even while speaking to each other.

The Master Road is presented as a series of squares along which you move cute little animated Naruto. As you progress from mission to mission, you frequently unlock new characters you can use in both the Master Road and other modes. You also unlock new jutsu attacks and tactics that you can activate to enhance attributes like attack power and speed. You're regularly given the chance to use points earned for completing missions to purchase movies, music, and character artwork as well. If the thought of acquiring all these goodies isn't enough to motivate you, you're out of luck because the gameplay itself is wholly unrewarding. Missions take on one of two formats. In some, the camera is situated close to your character, and you must defeat one or two opponents just as you would in a fighting game. In others, the camera is further away, giving the action the look of a side-scrolling platformer. In some missions, you must defeat a certain number of enemies to advance; other times, your goal is to reach the end within a certain time limit. No matter what format a mission takes or what goals you're assigned, the shallow action and poor controls ensure that they're all equally uninvolving.

Button mashing is the order of the day in the fights here. That's not to say that you don't have a decent variety of moves available, though neither the flimsy manual nor the game itself make any effort to familiarize you with your attacks. (Your best bet is the practice mode, where you can view a command list of your attacks and test them out on dummy opponents.) But this hardly matters because you can just mindlessly unleash strings of attacks until your opponents go down. There's rarely a need to think about what you're doing, and while you can eventually unlock upward of 50 characters, they don't bring any additional depth to the action. Each character does have a unique, visually stunning ultimate jutsu move that you can unleash if you have enough chakra, but these moves are so easy to pull off that the sense of satisfaction that comes from sending your opponent flying hundreds of meters into a mountainside quickly wears off. There's also a slight but noticeable delay between when you push a button and when your character performs the attack, sapping any sense of immediacy and impact from the combat. The side-scrolling levels are equally problematic. Your jumps are slow and floaty when quick and responsive is what you want for avoiding the obstacles in your way. But despite the poor controls, making your way to the exit is usually a simple matter of holding left or right and leaping over the enemies and dangers. Simple and dull. You'll soon long for the Master Road to offer you something other than these two basic types of missions, but it never does, which makes most of your journey along the road a real slog.


In addition to Master Road, there are practice and free battle modes. Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 also supports ad hoc multiplayer for up to four players. Many missions in Master Road let players invite a friend or three to help them out, and the wireless battle option lets you and your friends challenge each other. It's nice to see this functionality supported, but it doesn't change the fact that the gameplay is shallow and bland. There's no shortage of far-superior multiplayer fighting games available for the PSP, making this one impossible to recommend for solo players or those eager for human competition.

There is one area where this game doesn't disappoint. The visuals are beautiful, with detailed, well-animated characters and remarkably vivid environments. Little touches like rolling rivers, leaves blowing in the wind, and flickering light from flames go a long way toward making the surroundings for the action feel alive and authentic. Enthusiastic voice performances are the highlight of the game's sound, though you'll quickly tire of hearing Naruto declare "Health recovery!" and "Finders keepers!" nearly every time he grabs a power-up.
There are certainly hours upon hours of gameplay to be had here for completionists who are determined to unlock every character and acquire all the collectables, but no amount of unlockable character pictures can make putting up with this tedium worthwhile. It's not too much to ask for a game to deliver both fan service and solid gameplay. It's just more than this particular game can manage.

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LITTLE BIG PLANET

The Goods:
  • Imaginative level design  
  • Beautiful visuals and charming audio  
  • Local and online level sharing  
  • Gameplay tweaks alleviate frustration.
The Bads:  
  • No multiplayer  
  • Story mode is short  
  • Limited Sackboy manipulation  
  • Fiddly level editor tools.
Review of the game:

The original Little Big Planet on the PlayStation 3 boasted so many novel ideas that even though this new PSP game has made some concessions, it's still a great game. Sony's Cambridge Studio has managed to re-create the gameplay of the Media Molecule-developed original, while crafting its own great Story mode and making some gameplay tweaks as well. Some of the key tenets of the PS3 game have been removed, including multiplayer, the ability to manipulate Sackboy's arms and hips, and some of the more advanced sharing features. Given the limitations of the PSP hardware though, the game does a good job of translating most of the key features of the original and should please fans of the series and newcomers alike.


Little Big Planet is a side-scrolling platformer where you run, jump, and grab hold of objects in order to progress. As Sackboy, you have to leap across gaps, avoid deadly traps, and jump on the heads of enemies--familiar mechanics for anyone who has ever played a platformer. Little Big Planet's twist is its handmade aesthetic--not only in terms of the charming visuals, but also in the "anything goes" level design. One moment you might be chased by an angry dragon, and the next you'll be racing a magic carpet or flying a hot-air balloon. There is a story in each of the seven worlds, with recurring themes and characters, but they exist only to serve the outlandish ideas. Thankfully, the game constantly throws new ideas and situations at you, so you never really know what you're going to be doing next.

It's not just the designers who have been afforded this creativity, either; your enjoyment of the game hinges on your interest in customising every aspect of the world. You can completely redesign Sackboy with new clothes and accessories--and even the material he's made from. The world is also manipulatable; you can place stickers on any physical object, and placing them on special switch triggers allows you to open up new areas and collect more stickers and Sackboy accessories. This self-perpetuation works well, because you find more content as you progress, which in turn allows you to go back to earlier levels and collect even more stuff.

These concepts should be familiar to players of the PS3 game, but even they will be surprised at how close the PSP version is to its PS3 big brother. Both games have similarly epic levels, technically and artistically impressive visuals, and plenty of physics-based puzzles. The 30 levels in the PSP version are all completely new, and while there's nothing within them that's startlingly different, the level design is at least on a par with the original. The PSP game even improves on it in some ways--Sackboy now only moves between foreground and background, which reduces the fiddly nature of the three planes from the PS3 version, but doesn't completely eradicate it. Also, instead of giving you a limited number of lives at each checkpoint, the PSP version simply deducts 100 points from your score when you die, making the game much less frustrating overall.


Sadly, the constraints of the PSP hardware have resulted in some omissions. The most notable is multiplayer--there's no option to play with friends locally or online. This is certainly a disappointment given the fun that could be had playing the original with friends, and its omission is a huge one here. You also can't do as much physically with Sackboy--the D pad is used for facial expressions and gestures while holding the left shoulder button, but you can't swing his arms or shake his hips. Little Big Planet PSP also suffers from the same major problem as the PS3 version: Story mode is an incredibly short experience. There are 30 new levels across seven new locations, making it roughly the same size as the original, but you can blast through them all in a couple of sittings. You can expect your first play-through to take about four to five hours, some of which will be spent waiting on annoying long load times, regardless of whether you choose the UMD or downloaded version.

The original Little Big Planet was based on the tagline "Play, Create, Share," and this version follows the same ethos. There's a powerful level editor that lets you create your own levels from scratch, or you can use themed templates from the worlds you've completed in Story mode. In theory, these tools are powerful enough to allow you to create anything you see from the main game, but it's a fiddly process and definitely not for the fainthearted. The main problem is that there are fewer buttons and one less analog stick on the PSP than on a PS3 controller, making things slightly less intuitive than before. That said, the level creator works well given the limitations of the console interface, and while it's unlikely to become as huge a creator scene on PSP given the fiddlier controls, you're sure to see some interesting creations. One notable difference on the PSP, though, is that you can't edit other people's levels, so if you see something you like elsewhere, you're going to have to re-create it from scratch.

Thankfully, even if you never touch the creation tools, you can still benefit from their inclusion in the game. Creators can share their levels with other users both locally or over the Internet, so if you do have Internet access, you'll be able to extend the life of the game with user creations. Unlike with the PS3 version, you have to download and save each level in order to play them, but they're only 160KB each, so they're quick to download. The online system tracks how many people have played each level, how many have made it a favourite, and each level's overall score, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. The only thing that hasn't transferred from the PS3 is the tagging system, where you could assign descriptive words like "springy" or "long" once you'd finished a player-created level. It's a tried-and-tested system, and while there were only a few levels available online at the time of review, it's easy to filter the best-reviewed levels and the newest levels and even sort them by key words if you're looking for something special.


Little Big Planet is a beautiful-looking game, from both a technical and an artistic perspective. The game has a charming handcrafted look that's highly customisable, the physics system is integral to the gameplay, and there's rarely any slowdown, even during intense action. Slowdown can be a problem in user-generated content, but only when the creator packs a lot into a small space. Stephen Fry returns for voice-over duty, and his playful but eloquent delivery works perfectly. The soundtrack is also impressive, and while the music is less instantly recognisable, it follows the same cheery, upbeat tone as before, to excellent effect.

Little Big Planet brings the core gameplay of the PS3 game to the PSP with a few concessions, most notably multiplayer, but it retains the spirit that made the original so compelling. It also offers its own unique attractions, with a number of small but key improvements to the gameplay that help make up for the lack of multiplayer. The level design deserves particular praise--it's a short adventure, but the imagination and variety of the challenges mean that it's packed with memorable moments. If you're a fan of 2D platformers or like games that are designed around creativity, then Little Big Planet comes highly recommended.

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METAL GEAR ACID 2

The Goods:
  • More than 500 cards to collect  
  • Great artwork and character design  
  • Lots of exciting boss battles  
  • Arena mode lets you fight against familiar bosses from other Metal Gear games  
  • Great mission variety.
The Bads:  
  • Solid Eye is a cool gimmick, but it's not very practical for actually playing the game  
  • Once you get past the somewhat steep learning curve, the battles become a bit too easy  
  • Limited camera control can make it difficult to see your surroundings.
Review of the game:

Metal Gear Acid was one of the more unusual but surprisingly great launch titles for Sony's PSP. Now, barely a year later, there's already a follow-up. While not much has changed in that time, Metal Gear Acid 2 manages to deliver the same unique, strategic gameplay with the trademark style and oddball humor that Metal Gear Solid is known for, making it another great addition to your PSP library.


Metal Gear Acid 2 picks up as Snake and his companions are returning to America after a hard-fought mission. Snake is suffering from some serious amnesia, and is hoping to recover his past when he reaches friendly soil. Turns out Snake isn't getting a friendly welcome upon his return home. He's arrested by a man posing as an FBI agent and is coerced into completing a secret mission in exchange for his and his friends' freedom. Snake is taken to a weapons research facility, where he has to infiltrate the complex, gather some important evidence about the wicked scientist who, apparently, is orchestrating a hostile takeover using his advanced weapons systems. Of course, the story gets much more convoluted and bizarre than that, although it's relatively straightforward compared to other games in the Metal Gear series. You'll meet plenty of new characters, crazy bosses, and massive metal gears as you uncover the truth behind the research facility and Snake's clouded past.

The story is told through lengthy text exchanges that take place between each battle. The dialogue ranges from silly to overly dramatic, which feels right at home in a Metal Gear game. The static character portraits that accompany these scenes look fantastic, and the whole game has a great, unique sense of style.

To further the campy tone of the game, Metal Gear Acid 2 comes packed with a Solid Eye peripheral. The Solid Eye is a simple cardboard box that you slip over your PSP, and when you activate Solid Eye mode you can play the game in 3D. The effect looks great at first, but it's not practical for playing for more than a few minutes at a time because it makes some parts of the screen difficult to see. (Not to mention the fact that you'll start to feel like you're going cross-eyed if you try to play for more than 10 minutes.) You can switch between Solid Eye mode and regular viewing mode at any time during a battle, so if you want to see how a particular boss looks in 3D, you can slap on the peripheral for a few minutes and then take it off and continue playing. There are also several unlockable movies that you can watch in the Solid Eye theater. These short clips include cinematic sequences from Metal Gear Solid games, as well as some videos of girls playing with guns and modeling bikinis.

Aside from the Solid Eye, Metal Gear Acid 2 doesn't do anything remarkably different from its predecessor. You collect cards, which you can use to create a deck. You then take that deck into battle and use those cards to perform actions such as moving, attacking, or healing. The battles are all turn-based and take place in multitiered, grid-based stages. Each character gets only a certain number of actions per turn, and each time you use a card it counts as one action. Using cards also increases your cost, which basically works as initiative in this game. In each round of combat everyone's cost decreases, and the next person to reach zero cost gets to take a turn. There are cards that affect both your cost and the number of actions you can perform each turn, so you're ultimately limited only by the cards in your hand.

There are more than 500 cards in the game, including movement cards, weapons, items, traps, character cards, and link cards, which activate automatically when certain events take place. All of the cards in the game can be leveled up as well, which can significantly improve or sometimes completely change the way a card works. You get some cards from battle, but you can also purchase packs of three cards in the card shop. There are four different card sets, each pertaining to a certain Metal Gear Solid game and containing items, weapons, and characters specific to each of those games. To purchase or upgrade cards you need points, which you earn by clearing stages and defeating enemies in battle.


You can control up to two characters in battle: Snake, and a new character named Venus, a deft female mercenary who also happens to suffer from amnesia. The two characters use the same stock of cards, but you can customize each deck individually as you see fit. Both characters level up as you progress through the game, gaining increases in maximum health points and deck capacity.

The weapons in Acid 2 are standard MGS issue, and they are just as confusing to use as in the first game. If you played the first game, you'll pick up the equipment system without a problem, but if you're new to the series you'll probably struggle for the first few battles. It works like this: You have two equipment slots that you can fill with gun cards. To use those equipped guns, you have to use another gun card that has the same ammo type as the equipped weapon. It's confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it you'll understand that there's a lot more strategy to building a deck than simply using the strongest cards in your library.

The battles in Acid 2 offer plenty of variety to keep you on your toes. There are basic battles where you simply have to clear a room of enemies, there are gimmick battles where you have to do things like dodge trains or avoid being knocked off a bridge, and there are plenty of great boss battles. You'll fight several bizarre test patients, such as a giant ape creature with detachable arms, a guy who carries an oil drum and sets everything on fire, and a strange fellow who walks on the ceiling and confuses your characters. Of course, you'll also encounter plenty of generic guards, patrolling robots, and sentry guns. How you deal with the enemies is up to you. In several battles the objective is to simply get from one end of the stage to the other. In these situations you can try to kill every guard you see, but that will alert more guards who could end up overpowering you. If you prefer to take the stealth approach, you can belly-crawl through tight passages, hang from ledges, or try to knock out your enemies with nonlethal weapons.

After you get the system down and learn the ins and outs of putting together a deck, some of the battles do seem a bit too easy on the normal difficulty setting. But there's still plenty of challenge to be found in simply adapting to the variety of scenarios you'll find yourself in, because no two battles are ever quite the same.
Another problem you'll occasionally encounter during battle is not being able to see what's going on. Sometimes this is intentional, like in missions where you're in search mode and your vision is limited to the few squares right in front of you. Other times, it's simply a matter of poor camera angles that can't quite reach into some of the confined spaces you'll often find yourself in.

The graphics have been given an overhaul for Metal Gear Acid 2, from the bright yellow menu screen to the stylized, colorful look of the characters. The cel-shaded style creates a comic book aesthetic that is a nice break from the simple greys and greens of the previous game. The unsteady framerate from the original Metal Gear Acid has thankfully been put to rest for Acid 2, which runs smoothly whether you're in a room full of exploding barrels or are being trampled by a Metal Gear several stories tall.


The story could take you anywhere from 15 to 20 hours to complete, depending on how long you spend replaying battles to earn points and new cards. You can replay any stage that you've cleared with all-new objectives, which range from searching and elimination missions to slightly less-standard missions that require you to do things like advancing through the stage before your deck reshuffles. In addition to replaying the story stages, you can also play the new arena mode, which lets you play a two-on-two battle against some familiar bosses from the Metal Gear Solid franchise. If that still isn't enough, you can link up with a friend in an ad-hoc battle to see whose decks are better.

With more than 500 cards and a variety of modes and missions, you won't get tired of Metal Gear Acid 2 anytime soon. Acid 2 doesn't make any drastic changes to the series' formula, but it delivers the same great sense of style and humor wrapped around a deep and enjoyable collectible-card strategy game. So even if you've played the first game, there's enough new content here to back up the familiar but solid gameplay.

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LORD OF ARCANA

The Goods:
  • Becoming more powerful and earning better gear is satisfying  
  • A few nifty stylistic flourishes in battle.
The Bads:  
  • Combat is tedious and repetitive  
  • Bosses employ some infuriating tricks and take far too long to defeat  
  • Frequent loading times and other minor annoyances  
  • Bland visuals.
Review of the game:

Taking on quests, killing monsters, and slowly advancing from a relative weakling into the greatest warrior the realm has ever seen. It's the stuff of legends passed down from generation to generation, and when it's done right, it's the stuff of thrilling video games, too. But alas, though a journey from zero to hero is at the heart of Lord of Arcana, the thrills are absent. Instead, the road to becoming a well-equipped, powerful fighting machine in Lord of Arcana is paved with frustration and tedium.


After you create your character by selecting from a modest assortment of faces, hairstyles, and the like, Lord of Arcana begins by giving you a small taste of life as a powerful warrior. Fighting your way through a dungeon, you cut through goblins with relative ease and summon the devastating magic of the massive beast Bahamut to aid you. This trek culminates in a battle against a "Dragon of Murderous Rampage." But no sooner do you earn victory over this monster than you find yourself in a temple, stripped down to level one, without any of the powerful gear or magic you were just wielding. You have sacrificed all your strength and your memories to be transported here, to the seaside village of Porto Carillo, to test your fate and prove yourself to be the worthy successor to the ancient king of the land of Horodyn. A few early cutscenes set the stage for the tale, but for the most part, story takes a distant backseat to the business of embarking on quests, strengthening your character, and acquiring better gear.

To embark on a quest, you speak to the woman at the counter for the Slayers Guild in the village. Once you select a quest from the available options, you're transported to the area where the quest takes place, be it Neumellow Woods, Ahbor Desert, Kamma Wind Cave, or some other region. Then, it's up to you to complete the quest objective within a set time limit. Quests can involve killing a certain number of a specific type of enemy, gathering a certain item, or defeating a boss monster. No matter what the objective of your quest is, however, you can bet that completing it won't be much fun.

Combat with the ordinary monsters who roam each area is dull for a number of reasons. For one, monsters behave according to obvious, repetitive patterns, making each encounter with a given type of monster feel the same as every other. The various types of goblins you encounter frequently on your adventures, for instance, always do a happy little dance that lasts a few seconds before they attack, giving you ample time to guard or dash out of the way. Skeletons have a habit of guarding constantly, so fights against them become a continuous attempt to get behind them and attack where they are vulnerable. The little plantlike creatures called mandrakes have the irritating ability to summon monsters to aid them that may be more powerful than you can handle, but no matter. You can just escape from battle and then attack the mandrake again, hoping that this time you kill it before it calls for help. There are a few stylistic flourishes that liven combat up a bit, like the brutal finishing moves (called coups de grace) that you perform with the push of a button and that result in your foes exploding in a bloody mess. But such moments of gory visual glee can't stave off the boredom that quickly sets in. Lord of Arcana invites obvious comparisons to the Monster Hunter series, but fails to imbue the hunts with any sense of thrill whatsoever.


This remains true when tackling boss monsters. Agni, a flaming rock giant, rolls up into a ball, speeds around the arena for a while, and then stands up, woozy and disoriented, giving you an obvious chance to strike. This repeats again and again and again, for far, far too long, until at last he falls to your blows. The storm god Takemikazuchi has the ability to shrink you down to a minuscule size, which makes your attacks ineffectual and tremendously slows the rate at which you can cover ground. As a result of your slow movement, trying to track down the floating keystone you need to strike to return to normal size becomes an exercise in frustration. This trick is doubly frustrating when you encounter it again as you fight the regal horselike creature Kirin, whose speedy charging attacks are just about impossible to avoid when you're tiny. Boss battles culminate in flashy quick-time events called melee duels, but like the coups de grace, these can't redeem the tedium that precedes them. And when a boss finally falls to your attacks, you don't feel victorious so much as just relieved that it's over.

There are five types of weapons to choose from, and at least they feel significantly different from each other. One-handed swords allow for relatively quick attacks and let you wield a shield in battle. Maces are slower and heavier but let you unleash powerful charged strikes. The ludicrously huge two-handed swords take time to swing but do heavy damage. Polearms let you respond to enemy attacks with counterattacks. And firelances are pikes that fire projectiles, which makes fighting some enemies a joke, because you can stand in one place and chip away at their health from a safe distance, and they are seemingly powerless to do anything about it. Regardless of your choice of weapon, none of them can make the combat enjoyable. 


Teaming up with a friend or three via local multiplayer on your quests can make the combat less painful, but only because suffering with friends is better than suffering alone. Enemies don't become any more interesting to fight, and boss battles don't become any less tedious and frustrating. The lack of online multiplayer severely limits the amount of use you are likely to get out of this option, and the fact that only the host saves any actual mission completion data and quest progress makes tagging along with others a much less attractive proposition.

A number of other minor issues contribute to the general unpleasantness of questing. For one, each area is divided up into a number of very small sections, and you're treated to a loading time almost every time you exit one section and enter the next. (These can be offset somewhat by installing the game.) For another, locking on to enemies requires that you keep the L button held down, which is an unnecessary design decision, since a toggle would have worked just as well. And as you gather the torn leather, clean water, starch spuds, bog moss, and other items scattered around each area, you must press the button and wait a moment for your character to bend down and pick up each individual unit. There may be three cypress staffs in one spot, but you can't save time and grab all three of them at once. Individually, issues like this aren't terribly significant. But combined, they make the whole experience of playing Lord of Arcana even less enjoyable.


There's more to Lord of Arcana than combat. As you quest, your character becomes stronger, learns new weapon strikes, very slowly gains magic attacks, and gathers all kinds of items that let the blacksmith in town forge better equipment for him or her. And seeing your character develop as you sink time into killing monsters, earning experience, and completing quests carries with it a sense of satisfaction like that which you'd expect to find in just about any role-playing game. The problem with Lord of Arcana is that the things you need to do to make that progress are extremely tedious, repetitive, and occasionally infuriating. The whole point of getting stronger and acquiring better gear is to make you more effective on your next quest; rewards along the way can't make up for an unpleasant journey. On top of that, the game's not much to look at. Your attacks look powerful, but your enemies are so lacking in detail that you'd probably never know the skeletons were skeletons if you weren't told, and the arenas in which you do battle are about as bland as bland can be. With all the frustrations and all the boredom this game dishes out and with so many similar, better games available for the PSP, there's no reason to embark on this quest. Becoming the next lord of Arcana just isn't worth it.

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YS : THE OATH IN FELGHANA


The Goods:
  • Powerful bosses make you work for your supper  
  • Magic and melee combine for fast-paced, efficient action  
  • Scalable difficulty suits button mashers and experts alike.
The Bads:
  • Unmapped dungeons leave you running in circles  
  • 3D environments don't translate depth well.
 Review of the game:

Adol the Red is truly a hero for the ages. Not only does he appear to save the day in each new Ys title, but he also returns to the past to safeguard those he's already freed. Ys: The Oath in Felghana was originally released for the PC as a remake of the classic Ys III, and now, the title moves to the PSP for more handheld monster slaying. It showcases both action and platforming elements while providing a wide range of selectable difficulty settings for the adventurous, as well as the timid. The controls and the 3D world sometimes just don't get along, but there's enough solid action to tempt those with a need to blow up huge adversaries and bring peace to troubled lands.


Felghana is a small nation bordered by mountains and sea; it is isolated but rich in the valuable and unique raval ore. Its people have been governed for the past 20 years by an appointee of the Romun Empire, Count McGuire, a harsh master who treats his charges cruelly through taxation without representation and who issues all manner of strange edicts. The region is also the birthplace of Dogi, Adol's muscular companion, so when the pair hears of a disturbance in Felghana, nothing will do but to sail right over and investigate. A large cast of locals and other characters helps bring the tale to life with screen-grabbing, sizeable character portraits and quite a lot of voice acting. A focus on vocal storytelling means that Adol's actions (which are always referred to via the third person) are relayed through the warm tones of a narrator, and this technique goes a long way in aiding the flow of dialogue. It helps integrate the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of live conversations interspersed with phrases like, "Adol nods and offers his aid," making it clear that this is an after-the-fact account of the travels of an outrageously famous hero. It's still typical Ys fare that concentrates on vanquishing foes rather than focusing on its narrative journey, but all the extra personality helps to build out the world in a more nuanced way, even when some of the acting tends to be a bit hokey. The great soundtrack, driven by elements of rock, as well as some more traditional orchestral melodies, rounds out the audio and provides an energetic atmosphere.

Soon after your arrival, you encounter all sorts of feral beasts roaming the roads and wilds due to an unexplained increase in monster activity. The townspeople send you into scattered dungeons in your quest to rid Felghana of all its wicked things, and these areas are expansive and visually sharp. There's more of an emphasis on technical detail, such as patterns in paving stones and planks in wooden doors, than artistic flair, though character models are all drawn with intricate care. All the minute visual additions produce a nice static image, but they can tend to appear as a blur while you're racing around with a sword. That impacts gameplay because the environments here are in 3D but don't accurately convey depth. There are lots of situations where you have to perform jumps across platforms set at different heights in the foreground and background, but other than Adol's faint shadow, it can be hard to tell where you're oriented in space. Making jumps correctly is an important factor in multitiered dungeons where a misstep can cause you to drop three floors down. There are no dungeon maps, either, so these drops can leave you lost while you attempt to figure out both where you've ended up and where you're ultimately trying to go. In addition, there are some areas that purposefully place further restrictions on your field of vision through encroaching shadows. Instead of adding an invigorating sense of danger, this technique makes exploration and timing some particular leaps more frustrating than necessary. But, then, you can always vent your frustration on the monsters instead.


The world is filled with foes awaiting Adol's onslaught. You can carry yourself forward in a flurry of sword strikes, and you're able to perform both a jumping thrust upward and a strong downward stab, the latter of which has a chance to stun those who happen to be beneath your blade. As you explore, you collect three bracelets imbued with elemental magic that each grant Adol a different power. One lets you shoot fireballs and light torches; one performs a whirlwind attack that can be used to float in the air briefly; and one allows the use of a dash attack, which can also break obstacles in your path. Each of your bracelets can be enhanced by gems you discover in dungeons, and your gear can be upgraded by a smithy in town for a fee of gold and raval ore. While most foes are handily dispatched by your sword alone, others require you to use your elemental skills to exploit vulnerabilities. You can switch your equipped bracelet on the fly by pressing a shoulder button, and even with this short list of moves, Adol quickly becomes an efficient killing machine. As you battle, a boost gauge gradually fills with energy and allow you to execute boost mode, which fills you with power and allows you to hit harder and faster while halving damage taken. Later in the game, boost mode also restores a certain amount of health, which becomes a critical factor because there are no health potions that you can carry with you.

New areas are filled with deadly monsters that need to be treated with great caution. As you rack up consecutive strikes on your assailants, you start to gain an earned experience bonus, and your targets are more likely to drop draughts. Draughts are items that grant temporary bonuses to your strength, defense, or the rate at which you recharge magic, and the boost is a big help in moving up in levels. Leveling up gradually equalizes the power differential, so by the time you've reached the end of the dungeon, you're thrashing enemies handily. Most of your foes slowly creep toward you, but others dodge your attacks or are particularly aggressive. There are also those that skitter around without any particular rhyme or reason. This can be both irritating and amusing when you're trying to grind experience because upon seeing you approach, certain creatures fling themselves backward and soar off a cliff into a multi-screen drop, taking your points with them in their kamikaze abandon. 


The largest rewards come from killing a dungeon's bosses, in terms of both experience points and overall satisfaction. Ys games always feature imposing gatekeeper monsters that loom tall and unleash all sorts of horror upon you, and this installment is no exception. You're challenged to prove your skill from the first boss you encounter, as you avoid devastating abilities and fight your way to an opening to do damage. A nice feature in The Oath in Felghana is a generous difficulty dial that at the beginning of the game allows you to choose anything from very easy all the way up to nightmare, adjusting the challenge you'll face. If you still find yourself struggling during a boss battle--after getting creamed a couple of times--you can decrease the difficulty of that encounter specifically. Mainly this feature increases your attack slightly while decreasing damage slightly, and if you need to, you can do this several times over several attempts. The most resolute players may ignore this particular option, but if you find yourself stuck on a particularly angry boss, decreasing the difficulty slightly can give you the edge you need for victory. These selectors really open up the game to players of all levels of competence while preserving the stiff challenge that fans of the series would expect, creating a good balance.

Upon completion, you unlock an image gallery, the brutally difficult Inferno mode, and a time-attack mode that pits you against the ferocious boss monsters back-to-back at a selectable difficulty level. Defeating these bosses unlocks new, even more difficult bosses for you to fight. In addition, you have the option to open a new save file and use points to carry over attributes of your character to a new game--like your stats, your gold, and so on. Defeating each of the difficulty modes grants you additional gallery images, as well as differing point amounts to spend carrying content over to a new game, so completionists have no shortage of things to do.


Ys: The Oath in Felghana is suitable for just about anyone who likes to cut up monsters, though it's the normal difficulty and higher settings that will offer the best challenge and sense of accomplishment. The story is compact and unpretentious, the action is fast paced, and the involute dungeons provide some tricky platforming and a host of foes to obliterate. If you're looking for an uncomplicated action role-playing game and don't mind occasionally wrangling with the environment, The Oath in Felghana surely fits the bill.

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LEGO HARRY POTTER : YEARS 1-4


The Goods:
  • Charming to the last  
  • Varied and entertaining gameplay  
  • Well-structured narrative.
The Bads:
  • Some bugs  
  • Disparity in combat difficulty.
 Review of the game:

Forget complex storylines, plot intricacies, and profound character exposition: The Lego version of Harry Potter has slapstick. That's really the only option left for a game where none of the characters can speak, but luckily, it works just as well here as it has in past Lego games. Indeed, fans of the blocky adventure titles will take to Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 like Hermione to homework, reveling in the game's humour, familiar gameplay, and variety of challenges. What separates this game from its Lego cousins is the renewed focus on exploring and collecting: The game invites you to explore its detail-rich environments with promises of more rewards and secrets than you can poke a wand at. The gameplay also drives the narrative with more purpose than in past Lego games, which means you get a real sense of progression as you learn different charms and earn new abilities. There are some minor flaws, like scattered bugs and a disproportionate difficulty in combat, but these aren't enough to mar the magic.


As its title suggests, Lego Harry Potter is four adventures in one. You will begin with Harry's induction into Hogwarts in Year 1, move on to the secret-Riddle-d in Year 2, jump to the Sirius-ly lupine in Year 3, before arriving to face the magical challenges of Year 4. The game is modeled on the Harry Potter films rather than the original text, but you'll hardly notice the difference: The narrative has been considerably shortened and numerous liberties have been taken for the sake of comedy. The results are often hilarious. Take the moment Harry brings back Cedric's broken body at the end of chapter IV, for example. Dumbledore gasps and then hands him a Lego assembly sheet. There's also subtle brilliance in the game's environments, which are colourful, well detailed, and full of contextual accuracy, from the Dursley's home in Little Whinging to the draughty corridors of Hogwarts and everything in between.

You can move characters around either with the D pad or the analog stick (although the latter is better) and use the X button to interact with objects and people. A small 2D map insert at the top right-hand corner of the screen serves as your guide, with your current objective marked by a blue star. The Room of Requirement is your hub in the game, where you can collect studs, practice spells, spruce up your unlocked characters with some basic customization options, and replay through unlocked chapters. You have the option of playing in two modes: Story mode and Free Play mode. While the content of the two modes is the same, Free Play allows you to select any of the unlocked characters and make your way through these levels with an entirely different collection of spells. Apart from just being fun, there's certainly more worth in doing things this way because you are able to explore more areas and collect more goodies.

The first thing you notice in Story mode is that there are some objects you can't interact with right away (objects that glow blue are a go; objects that glow red mean you have to wait). This is because you have to learn spells as you go along--it doesn't all come at once. This structure creates a neat and coherent relationship between story and gameplay, which gives you a sense of progression and achievement. Can't light that torch or bring that platform down from the ceiling? Not to worry, you'll be learning those spells next! This gives you something new to consistently look forward to and adds anticipation. Gameplay is guided by a series of short, snappy missions that propel the story forward: You’re either asked to fight baddies, solve puzzles, find lost objects, or learn a new spell, but never in the same order and never just one at a time, which means things always stay interesting. Spells start out easy and get more complex on a need-to-know basis (for example, Harry doesn't learn to cast the patronus charm until Year 3 when he needs to fight Dementors). Reducto is used as the main attack, while other spells, such as wingardium leviosa, lumos, accio, revelio, reparo, and stupefy, also makes an appearance.

Casting spells is a lot of fun: Each spell has its own characteristic button combination, which you must copy exactly as it comes up on the onscreen prompt. Reducto is mapped to the square button because it is your main attack; however, other spells like wingardium leviosa require you to press the triangle button three times in quick succession. Harder spells, like transfiguration, require a mix--for example, you press the square button twice and then the circle once. This is an interesting way to cast spells--rather than just having them mapped to the existing buttons--and keeps you on your toes throughout the game. The gameplay doesn't actually freeze while you cast spells, which means that you still come under attack during combat. This is actually more enjoyable because of the challenge it sets: It simply means you have to prep yourself to get the button presses right the first time around.


While combat still plays an important part in Lego Harry Potter, the emphasis on exploration and collection means you are encouraged to smash as much of your Lego surroundings as you can in that extremely rewarding gleeful-sense-of-destruction kind of way. Doing this reveals an overwhelming amount treasure, from studs and secret chests to wizard hats and red bricks (which unlock special spells in Free Play mode). Of course, this wouldn't be a Lego game without some light platforming and puzzle-solving. Outside the environmental puzzles you are required to solve to progress through the game, you only encounter two other types of puzzles: a quick-and-easy Lego jigsaw puzzle and one where you are required to match up three pairs of objects in the order you see them. As for the platforming, the game prompts you whenever you need to jump by revealing four small blue arrows on each platform that you need to reach. While neither element is particularly challenging, they're fun all the same, and given that there's so much to do all the time, this aspect is not bothersome.

What is bothersome is the game's uneven combat difficulty. By far, the toughest battle in the game takes place between Harry and Draco Malfoy during the middle of Year 2, where Harry must defeat Draco in a series of short fights that test the repertoire of spells you've learned up to that point. By contrast, one of the easiest battles in the game is the final one, where Harry must defeat Lord Voldemort (or Voldy, if you will) at the end of Year 4. The fact that this battle is so unchallenging and over so quickly is disappointing and deeply unrewarding. This is not the only instance of this: More often than not, Harry faces his toughest fights at the most random moments, with no real explanation as to why, which makes things feel slightly disjointed from time to time. The game can also be a little behind the action: Sometimes it can take up to five or six seconds for the game to catch up and update the map with your next task after an objective has been completed. There are also some instances of slow loading times, but this doesn't happen often and isn't enough to take you out of the experience when it does occur.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 for the PSP is an exciting adventure with loads of variety and replay value. There are rich environments to be explored, countless studs to be collected, and a wide array of spells to learn and practice. If you're willing to forgive the minor glitches and focus on the carefully constructed narrative and diverse gameplay with all its characteristic Lego idiosyncrasies, you'll have a wizard of a time.